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How Pursuing Beauty Makes Us Better Humans
Our culture desperately needs to regain its ability to see again.
Ever bombarded with distraction and numbed by convenience, our eyes fall lazy to myriad photographic images that saturate our days through phone apps, internet browsers, and the television.
But here’s something we don’t think about when we consider how distraction works in our lives.
Distraction and convenience work in tandem.
Think about how your day is ordered and governed by convenience. It’s woven into the fabric of everything we do. From a business and marketing perspective, all major retail companies spend millions of dollars on research and development, tech upgrades, on psychological profiling to understand how they can offer you their product with zero friction involved in the sale.
We know this as consumers, but we don’t think about how this frictionless convenience affects our humanity.
Consider how convenience works in your life.
Everything lives within our phones. I can order dinner, groceries, business or art supplies, and download a movie while sitting on my Adirondack chair on the back terrace.
Frictionless consumption.
The result? We are training ourselves to prefer convenience—having something done for us—over “doing things” ourselves. Tim Wu wrote about the dark side of convenience in the New York Times. He says:
Though understood and promoted as an instrument of liberation, convenience has a dark side. With its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency, it threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life.
Created to free us, it can become a constraint on what we are willing to do, and thus in a subtle way it can enslave us.
Does Wu's saying that convenience enslaves us go too far?
I don’t think so. Anything taken to extremes can enslave us. We are creatures of desire. But when our desires get the best of us, nothing good comes of it.
But at the same time, does this notion of an enslaving convenience make convenience itself wrong? No, that would create a false dilemma. It’s not convenience or no convenience. Outside of this false dilemma lies the path of wisdom.
Wisdom tells us to pursue moderation in all things. And, to off-set our culture which is bent on only offering us extremes, wisdom says pursue understanding about the effects of convenience and distraction.
We don’t have to look any farther than the way God created us to live within the created order, working with our hands and our minds, and using our senses to participate with God and his created order.
God Created Us To Live Whole Lives, Not Isolated Ones
We must get outside and live with the earth beneath our feet and the sky above our heads. God created us to pursue beauty, not spectate from a lawn chair, drunk on the convenience of a push-button life.
{The Old Testament idea of “work” was multifaceted. It included "boda,” which is sacred work, as well as the idea of work pursued as craft. Intrinsic to our daily work is the pursuit of beauty—a perfection or completeness in what we build and the type of people we mold ourselves to be.}
But what happens is we don’t get into the outside world nearly enough. We allow the influence of screen time to reprogram our thinking, even how we see the world.
Essayist Susan Sontag says our photographic culture teaches us a “new visual code.” We think little of time spent scrolling through images. We don’t realize, however, that we’re training our minds to interpret the world and to make conclusions about what is worth seeing.
"This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.
They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads — as an anthology of images.
What is worth seeing. Think about that.
The moments spent on our phones indoctrinate us to make value judgments on the worth of certain images over others. Consider how this kind of value judgment factors into a culture of comparison. Our phones train us to cast judgment on others because our image-centric culture emphasizes the visual—and most often, the visual that we have not engaged with or participated in.
This reality has played out over the last several years with a report published by The Wallstreet Journal about how META targets young ladies to become addicted to Instagram and the visual comparison culture. Why? Because young ladies see things worn or used by influencers, and they desire them.
META has admitted to this. The ramifications are very harmful to young ladies; their confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. Psychologists are seeing an upswing in young ladies who are now dealing with depression due to this image-driven culture proliferated by the use of social media.
How does this affect the art world?
What does this “ethics of seeing” do to our ability to appreciate art or even pursue learning non-photographic arts, like watercolor painting?
Not everyone longs to be a painter. I get that. But the point of this notion of a new “ethic of seeing” rests in the pursuit of beauty.
The painter, sketcher, or pianist pursues their craft, and in that pursuit, they learn to see and hear the world in a way that fosters curiosity, spurs learning, and creates longing. Curiosity, learning, and longing work on us and help us derive meaning from our world.
But if digital information and images program us to see the world in a particular way and, thus, to value it in a way consistent with the world’s values, and we buy into this way of valuing the world, then we can ultimately ransom our God-given curiosity for that dopamine hit we get from social media and digital engagement.
Pursuing beauty reminds us that we cannot keep the whole world logged in our heads with an imagery index provided by the Internet. Likewise, the values of beauty encountered in the natural world, like wonder, awe, and terror, remind us of the inestimable nature of the universe and point to something beyond the created order, namely God.
So, How Can We Remain Constantly Curious Beauty Chasers?
For starters, we need to go marveling.
A Methodist preacher named Fred Craddock tells the story of how his ancestors used to take walks after church on Sundays.
On the walks, they’d “admire nature and collect unusual things” such as rocks or wildflowers. They called it “going marveling.” The intentional observance and gathering of natural things we take for granted daily strengthens our ability to see the world.
The English poet Gerard Manly Hopkins believed, “When you look hard at something, it seems to look hard at you.” It’s the idea that the more time we spend observing something, the more understanding we gain.
Have you ever noticed that when you know little about something, you have difficulty describing it? Understanding our world begins with our natural human curiosity.
“That seems obvious, but so what?”
Well, have you ever considered how well we even know how to describe a tree or the sky or the ocean? One of my favorite examples of this is Victorian British art critic John Ruskin’s explanation of our common misconception about the nature of ocean waves:
Most people think of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do not rise and fall.
They change.
Change both place and form, but they do not fall; one waves goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows not how,—becomes another wave.
When I first read Ruskin’s observation on the nature of an ocean wave, I sat stunned.
“Of course,” I thought. I was amazed at my own inability to describe something so common as a wave.
Then I began looking at other natural things we (read: I) take for granted, like the sky, trees, or how pelicans swim so close to curling waves at the beach.
When I really stopped to consider their makeup, their nature, even their color, or a pelican’s intrinsic desire to ride waves, I discovered that I’d raced by these objects or occurrences without truly seeing them.
Or even worse, I simply ignored them.
If I valued and pursued beauty, would it not show in my understanding and appreciation of the world?
Had I fallen prey to our photographic and convenience-drunk society, failing to look at things that I can’t scroll?
Secondly, we need to be people patient in wonder. Perhaps we don’t see all that well because we lack patience.
The writer David McCullough tacked a plaque above his desk that reads: “Look at your Fish.” It’s a story about the value of seeing.
Take a moment and read McCullough’s response to an interviewer from The Paris Review about why he keeps this plaque about his desk and the significance of this short statement: “Look at your fish.”
“Look at your fish.” It’s the test that Louis Agassiz, the nineteenth-century Harvard naturalist, gave every new student. He would take an odorous old fish out of a jar, set it in a tin pan in front of the student and say, Look at your fish.
Then Agassiz would leave. When he came back, he would ask the student what he’d seen. Not very much, they would most often say, and Agassiz would say it again:
Look at your fish.
This could go on for days.
The student would be encouraged to draw the fish but could use no tools for the examination, just hands and eyes.
Samuel Scudder, who later became a famous entomologist and expert on grasshoppers, left us the best account of the “ordeal with the fish.”
After several days, he {Samuel Scudder} still could not see whatever it was Agassiz wanted him to see. But, he said, I see how little I saw before.
Then Scudder had a brainstorm and he announced it to Agassiz the next morning: Paired organs, the same on both sides. Of course! Of course! Agassiz said, very pleased.
So Scudder naturally asked what he should do next, and Agassiz said, Look at your fish.
I love that story and have used it often when teaching classes on writing, because seeing is so important in this work.
Insight comes, more often than not, from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than from discovering something new.
Seeing is as much the job of an historian as it is of a poet or a painter, it seems to me. That’s Dickens’s great admonition to all writers, “Make me see.”
Are We Losing Our Inner Richness?
In 1952 Josef Pieper warned that so much visual noise in our world impedes our ability to see.
Pieper believed our inner richness was at stake.
Our culture will continue to progress in the realm of digital technology. But we cannot abandon real life. Real life is served up away from the noise and distractions and involves things we can touch, see, and smell.
Real life involves things that contribute to our inner richness.
Even mountaineer-philosopher John Muir knew the benefits of real life over the machine world. He wrote:
“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”
I worry about the price we will pay in years to come from generations of individuals weaned on distraction. What will result from our culture of noise and from our own willful impoverishment of the mind and body?
What kind of people will we become?
And Yet, I Have Hope.
Though technology is here to stay, we still possess the power to choose how we engage with it. Like you, I use digital technology every day.
But I must also decide to what extent I am willing to let digital technology govern me: its influence on my emotions, my consumptive choices, what I see, and how I allow it to influence how I interpret the world and other human beings.
Christian theology offers a wise exhortation to the problem of the world’s influence:
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.
(Romans 12:1-2, NLT)
Here are three ways to regain your God-given humanity and keep your inner richness intact.
Journal Your Engagement With The Created Order - Journaling is an essential activity for sustaining mental health and for observing our daily rhythms. Keep a small journal, like a Field Notes journal, to record your daily activities. A sample log might include a date, time, wake time, sleep time, and brief bullet points describing what you did for the day. Your log won’t lie. It will reveal if you got outside for that day, if you kept off of your devices, or if they consumed your day. I personally do this, and it’s proved very helpful in my efforts to keep a healthy rhythm of real-world participation. I recently changed from using Field Notes to using this wonderful compact journal.
Take Back Your Mornings - I write about this at length in my new book, The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to grab a copy. Many of the ideas I blog about can be found within The Beauty Chasers. “Take Back Your Mornings” means keep your phone off. Don’t let it be the first thing you reach for. It’s a simple act but a profound one. In fact, I recommend challenging yourself to wake earlier, make your cup of tea or coffee, and sit outside and let Scripture be your first engagement. This simple change to your day will redirect your mind, thought process, and heart—the seat of your emotions.
Rediscover Your Creative Self - Take pains to reignite your imagination. Free yourself from the myth that the imagination is only for the artist, musician, or actor. It’s not. God created every human being with an imagination. It is the prime organ that allows us to make sense of this world. It’s a meaning-making organ, as C.S. Lewis liked to refer to it. Untether your leisure time from screentime and nourish your imagination with new places, new people, new books, new adventures. You were created as creative. And your imagination enables you to engage with the world in new ways.
My new mini-course, The Summer Slowdown, explores three primary ways to revitalize our lives over the summer: Slow, See, and Participate. Today’s post is all about Seeing the world. The Summer Slowdown provides three pre-recorded teaching sessions and a 98-page magazine/workbook that walks you through the Slow, See, Participate Method. To explore more and purchase, click the blue button below.
A Practical Summer Challenge to Inspire You to Slow Down & Revitalize Your Life
Everything is an Attitude of Mind: 3 Ways to Flip Your Perspective
“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”
The world needs people like you.
—Fearless people who will walk the path of enchantment.
—who speak in songs.
—who live in wonder with eyes fixed on heaven.
It’s true. So, stop listening to the spirit of the age. You know it as the voice that likes to say how very mundane life is and how chic it is to mention how mundane life is and how so very trendy it is to grasp at moments as if they somehow seem to elude you every moment of your life.
How quickly we forget how wonder-full life is.
A tall and rather rotund man once wrote a small book that was really an excuse for him to write a diary for the public—it was the only way, he said, that he could keep a journal; do it publicly. The author was G.K. Chesterton.
Originally the book took the form of entries written for a public newspaper. He wrote for a newspaper at a time when newspapers were relevant, even in his hometown of London, which was flush with hundreds of papers.
The book is titled Tremendous Trifles. And it explores the wonder of the every day. Things we might call “trifling.” Like things found in a trouser’s pocket. It is said Chesterton could defend capitalism, democracy, and God with the trifling things found in one’s pant’s pocket.
In the first chapter of this short book, he writes:
Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.
The “want of wonder” relates to you and me. If we stop looking hard at the world, we will stop seeing it for all its intrinsic glory.
{It was the English poet Gerard Manly Hopkins who said when you look hard at the world, it looks hard back at you.}
But how can we live as seeing people in an age of distraction? How can we foster an attitude of mind that chooses to see the good and beautiful when all the world wants to sell us is fear, anxiety, and pain?
3 Ways to Flip Your Perspective
Number One - Talk to Yourself, Don’t Listen to Yourself
The Welsh minister Martin Lloyd-Jones made this idea famous. He writes:
“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc.
Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”
It’s easy to fall into the pit, trapped with a bossy self who likes nothing more than to remind you how downcast you should be, how hard life is, and how utterly hopeless the situation is.
But in Psalm 42, the psalmist flips the narrative. He says, “Sit down self, and let me know tell you something.”
Look at the contrast of selves talking:
His Self talking to him =Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?
His Rebuttal = I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again—
my Savior and my God.
Further down, more contrasting voices!
His Self talking to him = I hear the tumult of the raging seas
as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
His Rebuttal - But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night, I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.
Take back the narrative! Talk to yourself about your hope and your joy, and give thanks.
Number Two - Take a Walk in the Woods
I know. Seems almost silly, right? Can it really be that simple?
It can. And it’s time to take back our God-given gift of the created order and to reestablish our relationship with it.
Researchers from the Finnish Forestry Research Institute discovered that a 20-minute in the woods boosts mental and physical health and helps youths build immunity to allergies. Spend a day in the woods, and you’ll find that it lowers your blood pressure and improves your overall vitality.
My first response to this research was, “Are you telling me that a federal government pays a research institute to study whether or not being outside in the woods is good for us? Isn’t this obvious?”
But the reality? No, it’s not obvious because, over the last 15 years, our culture across the globe has become more connected to devices as it becomes more detached from the created order. We now need to be told to get outside and walk in the woods. Researchers are realizing the need to show the benefits of being outside regarding remaining isolated indoors in front of a screen.
Before I get to Number Three, I’m going to take a twenty-minute break and go walk in the woods behind my house. Be right back.
<<Ok, I’m back.>>
Number Three - Ask a Friend How You Can Help Them
Remove the focus on your self and replace it with time pouring into a relationship. This perspective-flipper comes straight from Scripture.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippans 2:4)
Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. (Hebrews 13:16)
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)
Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed. (Proverbs 19:17)
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
Participating in your immediate relationships is a spirit-filled way to keep your heart and mind off of your bossy self and on the needs of others. We’ve all experienced the phenomenon that happens when we pour into our loved ones. Magically our pain, hurt, and grief dims, replaced by the strength of the Holy Spirit.
Giving up the self heals even our deepest wounds.
A Parting Thought
Changing your perspective is more than simply changing your mind or narrowly focusing on a cerebral solution. You are a whole being, and wholeness comes from many areas of life.
You are:
Mind
Body
Spirit
And God created you to run on soul-ish things, as the wise theologian J.I. Packer once said. When we attend to all aspects of our lives, our attitudes change, and our physical countenance adjusts.
This is what revitalization looks like. This is what being a whole person is all about.
“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”
My new mini-course, The Summer Slowdown, explores three primary ways to revitalize our lives over the summer: Slow, See, and Participate. Today’s post is all about Participation in the created order and relationships. The Summer Slowdown provides three pre-recorded teaching sessions and a 98-page magazine/workbook that walks you through the Slow, See, Participate Method. To explore more and purchase, click the blue button below.
A Practical Summer Challenge to Inspire You to Slow Down & Revitalize Your Life
103 Ways to Digitally Detox and Regain Your Humanity.
Take your sons and daughters to the park.
Read The Moviegoer by Walker Percy.
Paint a picture.
Turn off your air and open your windows.
Walk barefoot in the grass, in the dirt, in the rain.
Visit the Lincoln Memorial. Keep a journal.
Watch Rushmore.
Listen to Radiohead’s OK Computer uninterrupted.
Read Flannery O’Connor’s collection of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge.
View the Howard Finster exhibit at the High Museum of Art.
Listen to Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s I See A Darkness, uninterrupted.
Mow your own grass.
Grow your own tomatoes: even if you don’t like tomatoes, your friends do.
Learn a card trick.
Read The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
Take a sabbatical, no matter how short.
Bake an apple pie—make your own crust.
Make something out of wood.
Learn G, C, and D chords on the guitar. And wail on them!
Attend something at Radio City Music Hall.
Take a photo. Develop it. Frame it.
Memorize the lyrics to “Sweet Caroline” by Neal Diamond.
Volunteer.
Wear something for comfort, not style.
Ride a bike.
Visit a National Park.
Knit a hat.
Read a book on science.
Listen to Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, uninterrupted.
Make a short movie, play it for your friends.
Play wiffleball with the kids on your street.
Visit a working farm. Observe.
Attend a concert by your local symphony.
Listen to Radiohead’s Kid A uninterrupted. Then do it again.
Act like a tourist.
Smell the coffee.
Wear socks that don’t match your outfit.
Become a beekeeper.
Go surfing.
Learn to play Van Halen’s "Jump" on the piano.
Visit the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Skip a rock in a creek.
Dance in your underwear to Generation X’s “Dancing With Myself.”
Climb a tree.
Make something out of Play-Doh.
Listen to “Prelude and Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla” from Das Rheingold by Richard Wagner.
Play checkers.
Study another religion.
Listen to live music at your local bar.
Drink a bottle of Chimay with a friend, repeat.
Avoid chain restaurants and stores when possible.
Listen to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons uninterrupted.
Read Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
Repurpose something.
Visit your local library.
Unplug.
Read The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck.
Handwrite a letter.
Write a poem.
Attend something at Atlanta’s Fox Theater.
Listen to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, Movement 4, “March to the Scaffold,” performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy.
Go for a boat ride.
Fly a kite.
Train to be a pilot.
Play chess.
Take your spouse on a date.
Watch Dancer in the Dark.
Visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Listen to Ten by Pearl Jam uninterrupted.
Read to your kids.
Visit the Vietnam Memorial.
Read The Book of Images by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Observe Sabbath.
Ride a four-wheeler.
Ride a four-wheeler in the snow.
Go horseback riding.
Go horseback riding in the snow.
Smoke a pipe occasionally.
Take a walk.
Join a sports team.
Wrestle with your sons and/or daughters.
Go fishing.
Give away some money; someone always has less than you.
Take a walk in the rain.
Stop by a friend’s house unannounced.
Learn to cook soul food.
Take a walk while it’s snowing.
Start a hobby that you previously abandoned.
Read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Ride a skateboard.
Make a wish.
Take your daughter on a date.
Believe in unicorns.
Read a book on philosophy.
Hang a birdhouse in your yard.
Listen to “Prelude, Suite for Solo Cello No. 6” by Yo-Yo Ma.
Go swimming in the ocean.
Make a card for someone.
Light a candle.
Play air guitar.
Draw a cartoon.
Read On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
Make a sand castle.
Do all of this without announcing it on social media or YouTube. Do it because life isn’t lived in pixels and bytes but in the amazing technicolor of a beautiful, beautiful world.
This post was taken from my first nonfiction book, co-authored with one of my best friends, Jason Locy. The book is Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society. And you can still buy it all these years later. We had a lot of fun making this list, as you can tell. We made the list years ago, but it all holds up nicely as I read it. Feel free to leave a tip to support my writing ministry, and by all means, share it with a friend or family member.
When I dusted off this list, it reminded me of the heart behind The Summer Slowdown, a new mini-course I released this week. The Summer Slowdown is a “Practical Summer Challenge to Inspire You to Slow Down & Revitalize Your Life.” Click the button below to explore more and buy.
A Practical Summer Challenge to Inspire You to Slow Down & Revitalize Your Life
Stop Marketing the Soul Out of the Church
The church has figured out what the folks at Starbucks, Diesel, Apple and countless other companies have known for a long time. Marketing works! By using the same techniques as other successful companies, the church can draw thousands into its doors each Sunday by doing one basic thing: marketing.
So, like any good business trying to grow, the church turns to the tried-and-true Godin-esque techniques. The church creates tribes and purple cows and has billboards and postcards and websites. Once someone shows up at church, a "brand experience" is created.
Consumption. Branding. Marketing. This is the language of the culture, and the church has adopted this language so it can attract people to their services.
“A consumer church is an antichrist church.”
But for Christians, the language of culture, if not stewarded well, can subvert selfless living. Inherent in the pop culture that is infiltrating church methodology are characteristics antithetical to a life that seeks to emulate Christ. Pop culture (music, movies, television, fashion, etc.) celebrates fame, power, money, greed, and excess. When these begin to seep into our gatherings, it is difficult to keep the gospel in its pure form. What are we saying when our gatherings mirror popular culture? In essence, we are promoting a way of living that is counter to what the Christian’s life, and the church's methods, should look like.
The Tension Is Killing Me
We, as Christians, operate in this odd tension: we preach sacrificial love above all else but communicate it in a language that is completely self-absorbed.
Theologian David Wells says, “We begin as if life were empty and without center and as if we were empowered by our choices to make life what we will. And so we create our own center, we create our own rules, and we make our own meaning. All of this springs from an alternative center in the universe. It is ourselves."
This tension poses some tough questions:
If the Christian faith is based in sacrifice (Mk 8:34) and humility (Phil. 2:3-11), how do those characteristics translate into our lives and gatherings?
How does the Christian leader communicate in and to a culture that speaks a language that is antithetical to the gospel?
How do we keep an attractive faith in a world that places value and infers status from artificial things?
If our faith is so amazing and filled with love, why do we have to use cheap marketing gimmicks so that people will see it?
What does that say about the God we represent?
These questions must be asked before we begin to develop church programs and marketing campaigns that are cloaked in the language of culture. When the church uses the language of culture, it's like listening to Bach being covered by an elevator-music band—it just doesn't sound right.
An Antichrist Church?
Many Christians argue that utilizing culture’s technology and methods is an effective way to speak to the world in a way they understand. But Eugene Peterson offers a different take. In The Jesus Way he says, "Once we start paying attention to Jesus’ ways, it doesn’t take us long to realize that following Jesus is radically different from following anyone else."
The reality is that we are so wrapped up with effective methodology, success metrics, and branding that the gospel message ends up looking and sounding like the world we live in instead of sounding like it comes from the One who is the complete Other.
Eugene Peterson is frank in his description of churches that look and act like this: “A consumer church is an antichrist church.”
If we survey the Christian cultural language, it is little different from that of the secularists. They use a language that leaves little room for truth and its inherent conflict. By cloaking the gospel message in the language of tolerance, accommodation, and cool we emasculate our faith to be little more than another narrative vying for position in a culture as fickle as the next trend.
Duke Divinity's Stanley Hauerwas says our, "job is not to make the gospel credible to the modern world, but to make the world credible to the gospel."
We have it backwards. We let culture dictate our faith instead of asserting a faith that comes from the One who transcends culture.
Our Treasured Reverent Faith
When we value something we treat it differently from a common product. What if our faith took on new meaning in our personal lives?
Costly grace, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it, comes with a perspective attached to it. If grace is costly it means that we view God as extraordinary. We revere him—the awe of who he is and what he has done for us remains always at the fore of our minds. If this is true, we should care about how we express our thoughts of God to the outside world.
Deep awe, reverence, and devotion are missing from the Christian cultural language. It just doesn’t fit in the cool box. Disciplines like simplicity and silence and solitude don't sell enough seats on Sunday morning. It is hard to create a cool church when you preach about the devotion and effort it takes to live a Christian life. But, these are the very things that are counter to the cultural language. These are the very things that are most appealing about our faith.
If we were to focus on these things, the inherent attractiveness of our faith would be evident to all. People would begin to see Christians anew. “The glory of God,” as St. Irenaeus said, “is man, fully alive.” We wouldn't need to wrap it in the cultural trend of the month, for it would wrap us ... in all its terrible wonder and majesty.
A Practical Summer Challenge to Inspire You to Slow Down & Revitalize Your Life
Why We Should Pursue Beauty in our Rhetoric
Have you ever heard a cackle of birds high up in the treetops? Crows, an unlikely songbird, will often gang-up on an owl in order to annoy it so much that it will move on, away from their neighbouring nests. Though owls make excellent rodent reducers, a benefit for humans, they like to feast on the babies of songbirds.
Owls will invade a crows nest, take their young, and eat them. In this way, the owl can abide as a constant pestilence to the treetop songbirds. You can see, therefore, why it's completely understandable for the owl and the songbird to hold court, each contemptuously berating the other for their vile existence.
The Owl and the Nightingale
This is the context for the medieval poem The Owl and the Nightingale. The poem is the "earliest example in English of a popular literary form known as a verse contest." What is a verse contest? It is represented in the poem as the narrator overhears a comical debate between an owl and a nightingale about who's song is more beautiful. The poem is written in Middle English, but you can find worthy translations on the web, or just buy this.
The Nightingale does not like the moralistic and grave Owl. The Owl, who listens to the Plaintiff with puffed chest and supreme arrogance, suggests the two settle the matter as is in harmony with their nature: by force. But the Nightingale does not fall for it, knowing the hawkish features of the Owl would rip it to shreds.
The Owl's solution is met with more sophistry from the Nightingale, who, along with the Owl, begins to exchange demeaning quips and name-calling. In efforts to prove their points, the fowl reference the human world, touching on issues of marital infidelity, human infallibility, free will, love, and sin. The debate careens into a chaotic harangue, spurred on by the cackling avian spectators.
Here's one exchange, to whet your whistle. The Nightingale says:
Grotesque thing,’ she said, ‘fly away! I feel bad at the sight of you. Certainly, I often have to stop singing because of your foul appearance. My heart sinks, and my tongue falters, when you are close to me. I’d rather spit than sing about your awful guggling.’
The owl waited until it was evening; she couldn't hold back any longer, because she was so angry that she could hardly breathe, and finally she spoke:
'How does my song seem to you now? Do you think that I can't sing just because I can't twitter? You often insult me and say things to upset and embarrass me. If I held you in my talons---if only I could!--and you were off your branch, you'd sing a very different tune!'
Fortunately, the Wren suggests they employ the services of a mediator lest the debate spiral into violence. So, they off to Poresham to inquire with Master Nicholas, the recommended mediator.
We Are All Dirty Birds
Because I often fall into rabbit holes during my research, I've surveyed some scholarship on this poem, and it's fascinating. Delightfully, both C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield's names appeared in several discussions. Lewis, in fact, quoted the poem directly in a letter dated July 4, 1955, to Alastair Fowler.
Fun facts aside, the "moral of the story," as it were, is not universally agreed upon, though most will acquiesce to the notion that the poem serves as a comical commentary on the contentious nature of human beings.
Interesting, this word "contentious." When someone is contentious they are usually causing a heated argument. It has Latin and French origins, which we might translate striven: to struggle of fight vigorously against. Of course, we can see "strife" there as well: anger or bitter disagreement over a fundamental issue.
I work from my front porch often. My front yard is basically a wood. The Pileated Woodpeckers, Finch, Bluebirds, Cardinals, Hummingbirds, Hawks, and Owls are all present--and a few I don't even recognize. The Owls often stir a raucous. I watch from the porch, the cacophony of flight and feathers, as the cackling debate ensues.
I am quick to point out the demise of popular rhetoric, be it the public square or the religious circle. But how quickly the words of François Fénelon sting me:
"One is very imperfect when one is so impatient with the imperfections of others."
Beauty in rhetoric, our speech, our writing, our interaction, demands deference, not impudence. Max Lucado recently made internet waves with his reflection on decency. We agree with Lucado's sentiments because we desire a culture governed by virtue rather than vice. But we, in our commentary of others, should be careful we do not remove culpability. Such a culture begins with individual decisions made by individual people, daily. (And certainly, we should demand such from our leaders.)
I will either heckle the Owl, rip the Nightingale to shreds, or seek another path. Which will it be?
A Practical Summer Challenge to Inspire You to Slow Down & Revitalize Your Life
How a Spiritual Minimalist Views True Wealth
One of the “Seven Aspects of Spiritual Minimalism” that I wrote about a few weeks ago, encourages us to see the physical and spiritual world as feeding off of each other. Number four reads:
Destroy the Spiritual and Material World Dichotomy - A product of Modernism is that we consider the material world as primary and relegate spiritual to religious times and spaces. This creates a haze on our Christian lens of life and the world in which we live. We don’t see ourselves as participating in a sacred world. Instead, we consume a material one.
So, how can I practically break down this dichotomy in my daily life?
For starters, I can change my view of wealth.
John Ruskin, the famous Victorian art critique and artist, defined wealth as "the real appreciative possession of what is good.” With this definition in mind, let's break down some ideas that might help us create homes that are inviting, restful, and beautiful.
But first, here are three things you can think through as you set about making your home a place wealthy with rest and love.
1. Reassess Your View of Wealth
Ruskin believed we interpret wealth backwards. We view wealth in our world as the accumulation of things and money. This kind of economy makes sense since it’s what most working governments use. But what about the individual person?
Ruskin challenges us to think about wealth as the possession and appreciation of good things. On Ruskin’s line of thinking, a person does not need to possess certain material goods to be wealthy. Rather, she needs to appreciate the good and beautiful things around her.
We become wealthier the more we learn and understand and appreciate those wonderful things already in existence—those good and beautiful things.
This way of thinking smashes our current ideas of what it means to be wealthy. It also reveals that you can possess good and beautiful things, and yet still remain impoverished if you do not take the time to see them.
2. Evaluate What You Desire
What things do I desire? Are they good? Beautiful? Do I seek to understand them? Do I appreciate them? Or does my desire for the profane, the accumulation of things, and money reveal my heart to be truly impoverished? These are not enjoyable questions to think about.
But when we do honestly consider them, we might blush at our collective lack of wealth.
3. Reconsider the Value of Spaces
The environments we create and cultivate in our private life, in our public vocations, and in our places of worship matter. Think about your home. I believe beauty in the home must battle with the digital world. If we promote and make our homes focused on digital media and screens then we foster environments of noise, distraction, and isolation, rather than environments of joy, hospitality (invitation), and communion.
Studies show that when you sit down with another person for a meeting or lunch, and you place your phone on the table, you are sending them a psychological message: I’m really not that interested in what you have to say.
If that is true with our interpersonal relationships, think about what the presence of multiple devices or televisions in our gathering spaces communicates to people we invite into our homes (this also applies to gathering spaces for worship, but that’s another rant altogether). Think about the impact such an environment has on the formation of children.
Training Our Affections
Ruskin’s idea of true wealth hearkens to a concept St. Augustine and Aristotle and C.S. Lewis wrote about: ordo amores, or, the training of the ordinate affections. It is simply the idea that when we educate the young, we should help them know and understand the beautiful things they should love and the evil things they should hate.
By helping them value the beautiful and discard the profane, we empower them with right affections so that when they mature they can then nurture themselves, and perhaps one day their own family, with true wealth.
Ok, on to some tips for creating a home space that inspires rest, love, and imagination. (I just through imagination in there because it sounded cool.)
Helpful Tips
What are some simple things we can do to foster environments of beauty? Here are a few ideas we've been experimenting with over the last few years.
1. Introduce the rhythm of gardening into your home.
It demands time away from devices, is educational for adults and children, gathers family members around a common goal, and creates a sense of wonder and accomplishment.
Start small; a nice 4x8 raised bed, perhaps. See what the presence of growing vegetables does to your spirit and the atmosphere of your home.
Never tried gardening before? No worries. Check out Nicole Burke’s site and jump over that hurdle.
2. Replace screens with a focus on music. We keep instruments in plain view and make them easily accessible.
Not a lot, just two or three. Their presence invites exploration and play. Not everyone has a musical background, so exchanging the presence of a television for a great sounding sound system can be a great way to invite joy, dancing, and family fun. Our girls love to create playlists and dance to them.
3. Replace TV time with art, or games.
I’m not much of a gamer, so I’ve taken the art route the past two years. I like to use our post-dinner times for watercoloring while Mommy gets some downtime to herself. I blast classical music and paint with the girls. It’s produced some very sweet times of conversation and delight. Not to mention it's developing a love for producing works of art in our girls.
4. Refocus the center of your home.
Instead of a TV, make an area for reading. The presence of books can induce a person to sit and read, rather than watch. Create space to talk rather than to surf the internet. This can be as simple as readjusting the furniture and keeping tablets and computers upstairs or away in drawers (or, God forbid, in the trash!).
5. Create delightful outdoor spaces.
Did you know 25% of Americans spend the entire day indoors? A shocking statistic. With that in mind, create an area in the backyard where you might go read a book or relax with your family. The fire pit is our favourite. But it’s also amazing what an ENO or Kammok hammock can do.
In our last house, all I had to do was set up my hammock, which takes 60 seconds, and the girls came running. They’d play in it for hours or just sit with him in it. The idea is to make the rhythm of your home one that fluctuates from inside to outside, rather than just inside.
Sourdough as Spiritual Discipline
Sourdough is on the rise. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has incited fear, panic, and partisan rancor, it has also revived older traditions that take time to cultivate and master, like bread baking. Many of us have decided to use the extra time on our hands in quarantine for baking sourdough bread.
Major news outlets have taken note of sourdough’s surge in popularity. The Washington Post reported on yeast and flour shortages brought on by the sudden influx of bread bakers. (Insider tip: when the supermarket runs out of flour, check your local farms. I ordered organic bread flour, wheat flour, and all-purpose flour in bulk from an organic farm near Durham, North Carolina.)
CNN published a piece about how baking sourdough was helping people cope with the anxiety associated with the pandemic. One writer confessed how the process of baking sourdough helped her handle the isolation. The New Yorker posted a humorous piece that chronicled the existential thoughts of sourdough starter.
At one point in history, all bread was sourdough—“a dough made of flour and water fermented without yeast for baking bread.” Bread experts attribute leavening bread to the Egyptians, who used wild yeast (naturally fermented from the air, flour, and even our bodies) for brewing beer and baking bread.
What To Do About The Desecration of Beauty
What is the standard for successful art in our culture? And who sets it? What we need to do to revive the beautiful in pop culture.
The late Oxford writer and philosopher Roger Scruton said, “Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.” He called our culture’s loss of beauty the “postmodern desecration.” Scruton chose “desecration” carefully: it’s a religious word that implies the spoiling of what is sacred.
I couldn’t help but think about Scruton’s words after watching a segment of the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this month. Lewdness replaced loveliness; empowered self-expression supplanted beauty. I was appalled and embarrassed.
And yet to some, the halftime show was a glorious display of two female “artists” expressing themselves in culturally and artistically significant ways.
Is this the bar for art in our culture? How far we’ve fallen from the grip of the truly beautiful.
How to Become a Spiritual Minimalist
This essay was originally written for my newsletter community. You can sign up to receive weekly articles, podcasts alerts, community discussions and more. You can sign up below.
Do you have the strength to go without?
This is the question turning over in my brain for the last several weeks. It’s a question that was posed in something I read in December, which I’ll get to in a minute. It’s a question that’s forced me to answer some hard questions about the way I live in this, our modern world of luxury.
And I want to drill that word into our brains for a moment: luxury.
Since my “reading,” My wife and I have this thing where we randomly identify the luxury in our lives that we’re unaware of. A luxury that we’re unaware of means simply something that we take for granted; like a hot shower, for example. Anyone who’s travelled on a missions trip knows this.
I can vividly remember a trip I took to Nepal with a small church team. I was so excited to take a shower after hiking to different villages for days in the mountains. There I stood, in what was the equivalent of a spare closet with a spigot, dancing beneath a very low hose sticking out of the wall pouring ice-cold water down my back and head. We don’t know how good we have it!
Simple luxuries like this are the fabric of the developed world. We don’t think about hot showers or buying massive televisions or binge-watching shows or overeating all the time and the list goes on, doesn’t it?
And I haven’t even touched on our consumption habits. We live in a society where our towns revolve around consumption centers.
“Oh, they’re putting in a new Home Goods center {fill in the blank with any box store}!” I’m not suggesting these stores are inherently bad, just observing that our culture revolves around the consumption of goods.
Our consumption has mushroomed so much in recent years that Marie Kondo, the bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (which I highly recommend!), has her own Netflix show. Her minimalist approach has breathed new life into people’s homes and helped them gain freedom over their “stuff.”
The Spiritual Minimalist
Minimalism is an interesting word.
It’s popular in design, for example. My friend Myquillyn Smith’s design brand is all about “cozy minimalism” (another book I highly recommend!)
Minimalism is valued in the writing world as well. Ernest Hemingway comes to mind when I think of a writer who used a small economy of words to tell his stories.
But have we ever considered applying minimalism to our spiritual lives? I’m not suggesting a reduction of spiritual practices or anything like that, I’m riffing on the idea that a person can reduce distractions in her life that impede her communion with God.
Picture Jesus walking the road to Bethany with his disciples.
He has no home, no source of income that makes any kind of sense to a modern person. He relies on God to provide and protect him. He moves about his work in great freedom.
He is like a walking lily of the field—to pull from one of the images Jesus liked to use in describing something that was literally carefree or stress-less.
You look at Jesus and there’s a simplicity to his life that is alluring. He’s a living example of minimalism. We find the principals we love about minimalism in artistic expression expressed in the physical and spiritual life of Jesus.
Keep that image of Jesus walking with his disciples in your mind as you read through the next section.
That Thing I Read
So here’s what really hit me hard when I read it a few months ago.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (one of my favourite writers/thinkers) once observed the lowly lifestyle of Jesus.
Jesus did not bring attention to himself, and he did not attempt to lure the masses. He lived humbly as a servant. He did not benefit from earthly possessions, nor do we get the sense from Scripture that Jesus desired possessions during his ministry.
“He did not trouble himself with house or home,” writes Kierkegaard.
Jesus did not seek shelter, the love or the romantic company of a woman, nor was he drawn to things that “usually claim the attention of men.”
It was a beautiful life, he says; even romantic, when you think about it. But then Kierkegaard asked something that got my attention: Is it appropriate?
“The question,” says Kierkegaard, “is whether a human being may venture to express the same idea.” Meaning, should we seek to be foot-loose wanderers?
I won’t keep you guessing. Kierkegaard answers this question: Yes.
I was beyond intrigued.
But there was a condition to his answer: A man or woman may so venture if he or she possesses the needed strength.
Strength? I thought. For what?
Here’s where it gets good. The strength to:
“lose himself in the service of the spirit that it never occurs to him to take care for meat and drink; if he is certain that want will not distract him, and that distress will not confound for him the structure of his life and teach him to rue that he did not first master the simple things before he presumed to understand more—then he may indeed venture, and his greatness will be more glorious than the serene security of the lilies of the field.”
This idea of possessing such strength to live “without” gripped me for days. I talked my wife’s ear off about it while considering whether or not I possessed the strength Kierkegaard described.
So, I created this short quiz in my mind and ruminated upon it with my wife while driving the PA Turnpike over the Christmas break:
What can I live without?
What pleasure(s) or luxuries distract me from spiritual intimacy with God?
Have my desires mastered me?
Am I willing to lose myself in the service of the spirit?
When was the last time I fasted in order to draw close to God?
I’m going to end here for now.
My challenge to you is: take the quiz. If you can get nitty-gritty-honest with yourself I think you’ll find it beneficial.
And, I’d love to hear your reflections. Send them along. Or, we can start a “Thread” here in the newsletter—it’s a cool option that allows us to meet up digitally and discuss topics; kind of like a comment thread but in real time.
In the next installment of Further Up, I’ll share Seven Insights to Spiritual Minimalism that I’m developing. And again, I’d love your feedback on them.
And Finally
The subtitle to this post is “Regaining Our Spiritual Grit.” As I reflected on whether or not I possessed the strength to grow deeper in my spiritual life, it occurred to me that I may have gotten soft spiritually.
When we’re on fire for God in those early years of our faith, everything is so new and fresh; we possess a kind of “edge” that helps us see the world for what it is and how it affects us. We begin to notice things about our lives that need to change.
But familiarity breeds contempt. It’s a sad reality that time and familiarity with “church culture” can deaden our spiritual grit and make us soft and flabby Jesus followers.
I’m excited to shed the flab. Some evidence of this is The Saturday Stoke. I designed this short podcast as a way for me to encourage and challenge you guys—my brothers and sisters in the faith. And it’s lit me up. I can’t wait to dig into the Word and my books for nuggets that will spur us on towards love and good deeds.
If you’re all in on shedding the spiritual flab, then let’s get to it. See you here again real soon!
How My Daughters See Me
Not long ago, I attended a sophisticated party. Beautifully adorned women, smartly dressed men. I sat and observed the wonder of human interaction. How we dip and pirouette in and out of conversations with sighs, laughs, and head curtsies.
Then I observed one elegant woman sit upon the out-of-the-way leather couch, off to herself, pull out her iPhone, and flip through, whatever.
Astounding, I thought. We, the sophisticated, turning from the real, to the virtual.
Then I thought how most of these beautiful men and women will return home, check their children (if they have them), dress for bed, and sit up looking back on the evening via news feeds from the social.
I marveled at how we can transition from the delights of fellowship, into the gorging of narcissism. This thought sent me reeling. I wondered how I looked within the grand context of human interaction. Was I checking my phone when e're I could? Did I return home simply to hop in bed and hop online?
Then I thought, How do my daughters see me?
They pop into our room during the pre-sleep I need-a-snack time. What's daddy doing? Flipping through the social? Binge watching? On the laptop? What legacy am I creating each morning, noon, and night? What am I etching into their hearts via my actions and inaction? Do they see me rush to the virtual world, when the physical world demands my attention?
Certainly digital/social media serves some purpose in our lives. But what struck me was how it has moved from simple augmentation of the real, to a weird kind of co-inherence with one another.
So, I scribbled down my manifesto, a declaration of my organic humanity and its relationship to the most important discipleship project I'm a part of: fathering my daughters.
My Manifesto
I want my girls to see dirt under my fingernails. Grease in my fingerprints. Grass stains on my jeans.
I want them to see me build a fire. Cook them s'mores. Pitch a tent.
I want them to see me work, hard. And then play, hard.
I want them to be overwhelmed with the wonder and beauty of books. To be humbled, intrigued, and inspired by human thought, because I, myself, respect all humans and their unique and varied thought.
I want them to read poetry, love poetry, write poetry, because I, myself, value poetry and its place in human discourse.
I want them to see me participate in hard conversations, through thoughtful interaction, through rigorous scholarship, and hard thinking on subjects that demand more than bumper-sticker-theology, sound-byte-moralism, or blog-deep-advocacy.
I want them to see me hold my ground, when the whole world shifts toward the popular trends and too-cool-ideology sparked by a postmodern narcissism that threatens to reduce sacramental and sacrificial living into a cesspool of self, tagged with the your-best-story-now mantra.
I want them to see me take on adventures. Travels, hikes, bike-hikes, day-hikes, back-yard-capades.
I want them to see me fail. I want them to see me get back up. And try again.
I want them to see me give mercy. I want them to see me accept grace. I want them to see me talking with their mom, in the quiet of the mornings on the porch.
I want them to find me playing my guitar when no one is looking or listening. I want them to know how beauty roots in solitude and blooms as an afront to chaos.
I want them to find me talking to God as if he hears, and wants to talk back, because he does.
I want them to discover the overwhelming wonder of music, from Bach to Led Zepplin. I want them to see me drink it in. I want them to see me singing with it, dancing to it, unafraid of the neighbor's surprise visit or what our sophisticated society may think.
I want them to hear my laughter shake the rafters.
I want them to hear my sobs resound in the quietness of my closet.
I want them to find me napping, under a tree, in a hammock.
I want them to find me by the fire just looking at stars, way past midnight when they should be in bed but can't sleep.
I want them to see me heading out on my mountain bike. Cleaning my mountain bike, fixing my mountain bike. I want them to ask me if they can come along.
I want them to see me bleed.
I want them to hear me tell stories.
I want them to feel free to crawl up into my lap, even while I'm working.
I want them never to have to wait until I post something to hear their inquiry.
I want them to be in the world, rather than spending time curating a virtual one.
I want to binge-watch THEM.
~
As a culture, our attentiveness has succumb to the glam of immediacy. I want my daughters to see me attentive, to them, to our life together, to the moment. I don't want them to see me rushing it off to the internet.
I didn't post any pictures from the party. I wanted to keep the images in my memory, private, and special. And the same goes for this Saturday when I planted pansies with my daughters. Life events don't have to be posted to be special. In fact, hiddenness enriches our lives with the value of intimacy.
Explore Dr. Tim’s New Book
A Note for the Curious.
Beauty can change you if you let it. That’s what the path of life has taught me so far. Beauty changed me. It still does. But don’t worry. This isn’t a book about sitting on beaches or mountain roads watching the sunset or meditating in art galleries—although I have done (and still do) these things.
This idea of chasing beauty is about pursuing a lifestyle that goes against the cultural grain of busyness, loudness, and naked ambition—you know, the kind of ambition we’re told we must have in order to find success in this cutthroat world.
My relatively short life has taught me that Beauty Chasers are thinkers and listeners. They see when the world goes blind. They embody quietness when all the world wants to do is scream. They promote the good of others when the world says to promote yourself. They give life to others when the world seems hell-bent on killing.
Beauty Chasers live their lives to a different cadence. They walk the path less traveled. If you’re interested in these things, and you’re willing to risk change, then read on, my friend.
Healthy Habits for a Happy Year of Writing