Being God's People, On Mission, Serving...

It was a positive day when southwest Michigan Saints brought the youthful evangelist, editor-reformer D. S. Warner to southwest Michigan as the final Reformation Movement of church history. “Oh, how my heart bounded within me when I saw the beautiful church” exuded Sebastian Michels, “how God set the members in the church, and how we were all members one of another and by one Spirit were all baptized into the one body, which is the church.”

Youthful vim, vigor, and vibrancy launched the band of several hundred followers into orbit from Grand Junction; albeit, the village offered few amenities for growing a business, starting a reformation, or raising a family. The location remained relatively obscure but Warner saw the railroad crossing as a point for connecting his message of holiness and unity with the world. He poetically dubbed it the place “where the lightning tracks cross.”

Their cooperative efforts became a global ministry. The Michigan faithful eventually organized as the Church of God in Michigan—1920, but always: they remained part of a larger body operating globally out of ministry offices in Anderson, IN. By 1953 they were allegedly the third fastest growing religious body in America. But as happens, institutionalization slowed their excitement and within six decades many local congregation ran on flat tires, wrestling with a culture of drug abuse, divorce and defective lifestyles--75% of churches thought plateaued or terminally ill.

In the 1980s Gerald Nevitt accepted a call to leadership at Michigan’s Lansing Service Center. Completing his doctoral studies at Fuller, he wrote a book I value highly:  God’s People On Mission In Ministry. Nevitt proved a capable State Administrator, but his book plan failed to ignite the necessary fire—just another church growth book! Congregations floundered, fish-tailing in flabby living, spiritual obesity, and in general out of shape.

The church sometimes seemed more like religious tourists sauntering through Disneyland than kingdom sojourners. Among my pleasant memories of ministry are negative pictures that linger, like the new friend who admitted, “I wouldn’t put my family in here,” after helping me unload our possessions from the car into the church basement where we were to reside as the new pastors.

Although new people came in the front door, there were those leaders like Brother Frederick who blind-sided me at the door on Palm Sunday as he handed me the Easter programming and exited with this declaration: “I’m tired of being preached at!” His Easter worship consisted of joining the downtown United Methodist Church.

When our neighbors learned of it--we were all neighbors--two ladies took my wife across town and together they sat and watched this “my good man” exit a nearby bar with a blonde on his arm--not his wife. It split the church right down the center aisle. Being as innocent as green grass, I thought I was preaching a constructive Easterseries on Christian discipleship, only to discover I was unwittingly revealing someone’s spiritual unfaithfulness.

In forty-five years as a church leader, I never found a church that did not want evangelism and growth. Yet, many  wanted me to preach and pray while they went to play. As their pastor, I became their hired gun; their chaplain. The time would come when I would understand that there are times when the church needs to repent for being blind to God’s greatest desire, and for their unwillingness to leave the ninety and nine and go looking searching for that one lost sheep. I found the church does not always behave like the priesthood of believers.

Truthfully, many consider the Priesthood of believers to mean privatized faith where every member’s opinion is equally right and without concern for one's neighbor. When a very young preacher, I heard a pastor preach at a district Youth Rally where he named four in the Trinity. Although his teaching did not square with scripture, when I mentioned it to an older pastor I discovered no one else caught the distinction … but I did.

Some consider the priesthood of believers to mean the majority opinion is always right. Everyone in the church is on the same level, but the Apostles nonetheless guided the Jerusalem church under the mutual guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some Church of God people have not yet learned that the Holy Spirit gifts the church with “pastoral oversight” with “spiritual insight”. 

This recalls the friend who spent much of his sermon telling his congregation of hog farmers how to raise hogs. He concluded by confessing that he knew that they knew that he didn’t know how to raise hogs. But then, he explained, neither did they know how to run the church.

“We are called to be more than enclaves of our particular brand of Christianity” wrote theologian Gil Stafford, who added, “if the church is nothing more than this, then any cul-de-sac will do as a location” (At the Crossroads/78). The Bible describes God choosing Israel to become a channel of saving grace--His delivery system for introducing the Messiah (Savior) into the world.

When Israel failed to understand their mission, God moved beyond the old Covenant (OT) and established  the new Covenant (NT)--the New Israel--those believing in Jesus the Messiah--the church. Peter called the resulting church a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, “that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (I Peter 2:9, NIV).

We are reminded that Jesus remains our message, even while we find our way through our negative and positive perspectives of what God is about. Our prayer at Warner’s World is that we learn to walk daily with him, and that we fulfill our mission of revealing God to an unbelieving world.

I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com.

Near To the Heart of God

A night employee at East Tennessee Norris Dam saw the warming glow of kerosene lanterns in the cabins across the lake. Puzzled by this paradox of primitive lighting within the shadows of the great hydroelectric dam, the employee discovered that residents there lacked transmission lines by which to connect to the main power system.

Living outside of Christ is like living in the shadows of the great hydroelectric dam without the blessed benefits of its electrical power. The life of Jesus, His death, and resurrection connect us to heaven’s generating plant and enable us to live much fuller lives than otherwise possible.

When the disciples walked daily with Jesus, they discovered the source of His power. Watching him, they recognized their weakness and asked that He teach them to pray“(11:1 NKJV).

Accompanying Him early and late, those disciples saw prayer fortified Jesus for public encounters that ordinarily drain one’s energy reserves and leave empty tanks. The disciples observed the positive changes in people’s lives when Jesus prayed for them and with them.

They knew about pride, idolatry, and disobedience, without being reminded of their shortfalls. They knew the sacred writings; they had l learned Hebrew wisdom from a very young age, as did every Jewish boy. They prayed by custom three times a day. Moreover, they understood the barriers to prayer; they had experienced enough of their own.

However: when Jesus prayed, they felt the frailty and self-dependence of their lives. They compared His personal experiences to the embellishments of the lukewarm Pharisees who prayed impassioned public prayers on the street-corner. When Jesus prayed, they felt the sun rise on a new day of fresh anointing and they deeply yearned to experience the Father’s fellowship more fully (Luke 11:1).

The further they traveled with Him, the wider became their horizon of transformed living, altered circumstances, and deepened trust. Fired by deeper desire for spiritual intimacy, the disciples insisted, “Help us pray as you pray.”

Do you long for His renewing likeness (Ro. 8:29). Do you yearn for solitude, where you too can acknowledge your need to confess Him as Lord, and experience His renewing? Then pray:

“Make us more usable today than yesterday. Guide our words. Express your will through our thoughts and lives. Fortify us to bear witness to your living presence.

“When preoccupied with our own needs open our unseeing eyes and unhearing ears and help us recognize the needy. Clear our clogged channels of communication. Enable us to lighten the burdens of the over-burdened and friendless.

“We want your approval more than fame or fortune, so use us we pray, for as much or as little as you can glorify. We offer our best--wherever we are--whenever you call. Guide us, in the powerful name of Jesus, we pray.”

For, as Cleland McAfee wrote,

               There is a place of quiet release,

                              Near to the heart of God,

               A place where sin cannot molest,

                              Near to the heart of God.
_____

               O Jesus blest Redeemer,

                              Sent from the heart of God,

               Hold us who wait before Thee.

                              Near to the heart of God. ¹

_____

               1 PRAISE! Our Songs and Hymns, Ed. By Norman Peterson. (Grand Rapids: Singspiration Music, 1979), “Near to the Heart of God” by Cleland B. McAfee, p. 410.

From Warner’s World, this is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Barnabas, the Encourager

Saul of Tarsus lived purposeful, devoting himself to God, heart, soul, mind and body. As a student of Gamaliel, he drank deeply from his Master teacher’s wisdom. Pleasing God became his pearl of great price. Passionate pursuit  eventually won him acclaim as a “Pharisee of Pharisees.”

Saul’s choleric temperament drove him to drink deeply, while others merely sipped from life‘s cup. Quenching his insatiable thirst finally launched him on a crusade of defending God and defining honest monotheism. Self-sufficient, impetuous, and hot-tempered, Saul cut and slashed with quick wit and cruel sarcasm--until encountering Jesus en route to Damascus.

Convinced that Jesus’ followers distorted, diluted, and diminished Jewish faith, Saul became a crusader. The very idea of Jesus usurping God’s glory whipped his righteous indignation into a raging wildfire. His attempts at mending the torn fabric of Hebrew faith quickly led the followers of Jesus avoiding him wherever possible. Thus, Saul became the Tarsus terrorist, persecuting Christians with the zeal of a suicide bomber.

But every Saul needs a Barnabas. Beneath Saul’s threats and terrorist actions, was the intentional focus on Godly perfection, and God always has use for a passionate, but honest, Pharisee.  The encounter between God and Saul en route to Damascus reshaped the contours of Saul’s life. When he sufficiently recovered from that experience, call it what you will, Saul attached himself to the believers in Damascus and began convincing so many people of the resurrection of Jesus, that people began questioning, “Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests” (Acts 9:22 NJKV).

Saul stirred up so much success proving Jesus as Messiah that he had to flee at the midnight hour, going over the city wall hidden in a basket. Consequently, he tried to join the church in Jerusalem, but the Christians there knew better than to accept a terrorist from Tarsus. They disbelieved him, being in fear of him.

Yet Barnabas took Saul to the Apostles so they could hear his testimony. What was Barnabas thinking? How do you treat new believers who don’t yet speak church lingo? I could cite numerous examples of new Christians getting a crash course of proper behavior from well-meaning  but-older tried and true Christians; you know. . .?

That worked for a while, but again opposition to Saul arose and some sought to kill him. When the Grecian Jews tried to kill him, the brothers sent Saul off in exile to Caesarea bringing a time of cooling down from persecution (Acts 9:29-31).

Interesting man: Barnabas; first known as Joseph, a Jewish member of the Tribe of Levi, one of the twelve original tribes of Israel and described as being from Cyprus. He had earlier found the resurrection of Jesus so compelling he joined the Jerusalem fellowship and as a ”followers of The Way” Joseph got so deeply involved that when a special need arose in the fellowship, he sold some private property and helped those needy and suffering members.

He obviously attracted the attention of the Apostles and their company. How could they miss his generosity! Moreover, his brand of practical generosity brought a contagious spirit.  As people came to know him, they saw his potential for leadership and soon his friends began greeting him with a new name--Barnabas, “son of encouragement” (Acts 4:36-37 NKJV)).

Later, word got back to Jerusalem about some great success in Antioch, so they sent Barnabas to check it out. He saw it, got all excited and the first thing he did was go back to Tarsus and get the controversial Saul, whom he had already helped out a couple of times … and together they ministered a “whole year” and taught “great numbers of people” and the Christians there were the first to be called “Christians” (Acts 11:22-26). Wow! They made history there.

Saul became Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, but not without the help of this generous man who could see deeper than Saul’s reputation and would introduce him to the Apostles, and would assist and encourage him when others would reject him. Then they end up working together, with Paul eventually becoming the spokesman of the two rather than the steady homesteader. Finally, in Acts thirteen, the church sent Paul and Barnabas as the first Christian missionaries, going to Cyprus, as seemed good to the Holy Spirit.

Yes, we badly need Apostles like Paul today. And along some lonely Damascus Road, God does His work in the hearts of such as Saul of Tarsus (Paul). But those uniquely talented leaders come at a price. Somewhere along the way there is a generous hearted encourager, who will give sacrificially to empower another. Or, they will stand in the gap and protect a new believer who has yet to find his or her empowerment. Or, they will exalt a gifted person of exceptional skills and happily serve as the accompanist or play second fiddle to the main act.

Yes, we need people of Paul’s caliber today! But perhaps even more; we need people like Barnabas: “He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord” (Acts 11:24 NIV).

From Warner’s World, May more of us seek the gift of encourager and learn to be as brave and generous as Barnabas. The picture above is one of my many encouragers, sidelined but still loved. This is walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Winning the Gold

John Eldredge and Brent Curtis weave a compelling story of a nineteenth century discuss thrower who developed his skills in his native Scottish highlands before professional trainers existed (The Sacred Romance/Thomas Nelson). 

           

The would-be competitor made his own discus from a description he read in a book. He failed to understand that the discus used in competition would be made of wood and only rimmed with iron. Thus, he made his discus of solid metal, three or four times the weight of a competition discus.

           

He measured his field and marked the distance of the current record holder, and began training. He practiced for nearly a year, using his self-imposed burden. When finally able to match the record, he traveled to England  and confidently prepared to compete; he was ready to win the gold.

When officials handed our hero an official discus made of wood, and only rimmed with iron, he promptly threw it like a tea saucer and set a new record. He threw it so far that no one could match him and for many years he remained the uncontested champion.

A tenting accident became that iron discus for Charles, a young minister. An accident stole Charles’s career and left him lying on a bed of pain for the next forty-one years. There, chained to his bed by self-pity and depression, Charles laid in a depressed state for eight long years before rediscovering the power of faith.

"Faith produces the building blocks wherewith we build up life,” wrote C. W. Naylor (The Secret of the Singing Heart/Warner Press/96). Stumbling along in his dark night of affliction, Charles re-discovered God in the darkness of his own soul. Determining that God had not deserted him, Naylor now turned from his self-imposed condemnation and accepted his limitation. Thus, he began writing a new chapter in his life.

God opened “doors of opportunity to me in a most unexpected way,” he confessed, (Singing Heart/ 69). Fresh discoveries of God’s abounding grace radiated from his humble Hoosier bungalow. Re-assured of God’s loving grace, Naylor faithfully pushed his pen across page after page of joyous faith.

His drooping spirit began to lift, like a sagging Spruce branch rising with the melting of its heavy snow-burden. Naylor’s singing heart overcame his pain and suffering. Moreover, his new audience delighted in his new inspirational writings and his audience became larger and more effective than ever..

After twenty-one years of constant suffering, Naylor concluded, “I am happy, I am happy everyday, I will not have it any other way.”  A singing heart did not eliminate those difficult days when the bed-ridden preacher had “to pull hard on the rope” to make the joy bells “to ring.”

However, Naylor wrote, “I have learned that troubles do not make unhappiness” and I “kept on pulling until they pealed out their joyous tones” (p. 50).

One of the numerous hymns that Naylor wrote was this one that comes from Romans 8:35-39.  Written prior to his accident, it establishes the benchmark of our faith. It also prepared Charles Wesley Naylor for the very dark tunnel ahead of him, and the singing heart he would discover  through the renewing of his faith:

            Whether I live or die,

                        Whether I wake or sleep,

            Whether upon the land

                        Or on the stormy deep;

            When ‘tis serene and calm

                        Or when the wild winds blow,

            I shall not be afraid--

                        I am the Lord’s I know.

            When with abundant store

                        Or in deep poverty,

            And when the world may smile

                        Or it may frown on me;

            When it shall help me on

                        Or shall obstruct my way,

            Still shall my heart rejoice--

                        I am the Lord’s today.

                                                            (Worship the Lord/1989/639).

            Later, C. W Naylor recalled the earlier events in his life that led to his writing of this popular hymn.  He was a young itinerant minister, but circumstance dictated that he put aside his traveling evangelistic ministry so that he might care for his injured grandfather. One gray day while sitting by the window, Charles watched the falling raindrops.

Overcome momentarily with a spirit of depression resulting from his inactivity and lack of local preaching opportunities, Charles meditated on his circumstances. After quieting his spirit before God, he concluded. “Well, if I can do nothing, I am the Lord’s anyway.”

With that thought percolating in his mind, the young preacher took pencil and paper in hand, and began to write. Recounting that event in an article he wrote later, he admitted that the words he wrote expressed “the feelings that were in my heart as nearly as I could in the words of song” (Warner Press/Vital Christianity/7-4-76).

            Adversities come and go, but faith fortifies us in the knowledge

           

            There’s no defeat in life

                        Save from within;

            Unless you’re beaten there

                        You’re bound to win.

                                                            (Singing Heart/11)

From Warner’s World, I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Embracing Life

Having business at the Post Office this morning, I pushed myself enough to dress warmly and drive to town in heavy snow. The morning was mild, the polar vortex having receded … It felt good!  While there, I inter-acted with a number of people, assisting a young woman into the building with her large package, observing a man who had to go back through the line for whatever reason, and in general watch the crowd.

Everybody seemed relaxed although the weather seemed rather insistent on making everyone change their pace. It felt good! I realized I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed walking the streets of my Lake Michigan community in a hard snowstorm as a teen, deeply burrowed into a pair of high-top boots, heavy sheepskin jacket, cap and ear-muffs. That was more than sixty years years ago when I experienced the pleasure of walking the long mile home from school to my house on the far south outskirts. I found that experience exhilarating!

When I left home for college, I also left those lakeshore winters of West Michigan and for almost three decades I only dreamed of weather with four full seasons. Following my return to West Michigan, I learned all over again how to experience Michigan winters, except I discovered lake effect snows and how it is to experience winter as an adult. Many of those winters, I enjoyed clearing the snow from the driveway and keeping my sidewalks clean, even keeping our block cleared, and nearest neighbors shoveled out.

On returning home from the Post Office, I did a bit of clean-up. Rick keeps my drive plowed with his truck but I cleared the way for the Postman and checked the sidewalk for stray pedestrians. It felt good as I remembered how I once enjoyed such experiences that are now rejected simply because “I’m too old and don’t feel like it!” Standing there, shovel in hand, “it felt good, all over again”! 

Regardless of the pain in my back, resulting in double scoliosis from a painful 20-foot fall while working on our new church building in Three Rivers in 1985, I experienced that same exhilaration. Reminds me of the picture I posted on Facebook yesterday. I wrote noting the day as February 1; saying it will not be long now, and posted a Netherlands Nursery scene revealing acres of the red and white tulips I so dearly love, growing among flowering trees – truly a lovely Spring scene -- pictured above.

With that, Jim Fleming posted a response note from Ocala, Florida, jesting with me for being something of an optimist.Maybe so, Jim; or, maybe I wilfully (or naively) choose to embrace life. With the onslaught of years, many people forget the exhilaration of a strenuous walk in a snowstorm with temperatures in the teens. With the forming and solidifying of habits, how easy it is to unconsciously reject the exhilarating exercises of younger years, or to become so comfortable in our ways that we habitually resist change and other discomforts. 

Whatever, I jestingly fired back to the reverend Jim and reminded him of that Prince of Southern Baptist preacher’s, Dr. R. G. Lee and his famous sermon that said, “Sunday is coming!” Still later, I shared my musings with my wife, in Kentucky, 375 miles down the road and unable to come home because doctors say she cannot travel. This is the person to whom I have been married 67 years (come 2-9), who has never known what it was to back up from anything; --her own potential death via cancer to the potential loss of the “preemie” she birthed after losing five babies in the attempt. 

More recently, I read Marjorie Holmes novel The Messiah and was greatly inspired by the way Jesus embraced life—right up to being nailed down to a cross. He embraced his own cross rather than resisting it or fleeing from it. With that, I turned back to a thought I have had many times: the reason so many people resist Christianity is that they reject change, discomfort, and pain. They cannot, or will not, confess a failure, push aside the pieces, and accept the changes involved in facing forward into tomorrow—embrace the future.  

It is true, Jesus promised abundant life, but abundant life comes only as you embrace it, in spite of the snow storm, the threat of death, the potential loss of a child, or terminal illness like my friend Paul currently experiences. Instead of fleeing from it, Paul has embraced it and worked with his medical team. He laughed at his transition from black hair to baldness, while his church prayed. He has modeled a wonderful example, although in a very real sense he, like Jesus, was being nailed to a cross.

Next Thursday morning at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Paul will undergo the surgical knife. He expects to return home cancer free. His walk has been painful, but hopeful. His surgery will be fearful, but we all remain prayerfully hopeful. The prognosis is very good, but life has no guarantees. Like the rest of us in our uncertainties, Paul follows Jesus with that expectant air of embracing the future.

As the Church flounders today amid uncertainty, transition, and turmoil, my hope is that we can all accept the challenge before each of us to embrace the future, whatever change, uncertainty, discomfort, or pain it may hold. From Warner’s World, I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

Regarding Presidential Executive Privilege

Quoting from today’s NT Times piece by Reporter John Harwood, “If you score him by intent and things he has proposed, he’d (President Obama) get pretty good marks,” said David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. “If you were grading him on results, which is what matters to the next generation, he would get a much poorer grade.”

Without doubt, the American democratic system is broken. Like professional sports, gambling, and numerous other issues, the political will to provide equality of opportunity for every person in every segment of life is sidelined by the infusion of money and personal interests to be purchased for the Almighty Dollar.

As it was in the days of Jesus, so is it today. Pharisaic interests (the orthodox religious of his day) focus their efforts on maintaining an institution that supports traditions and interpretations at the expense of truth as experienced by the people. In return, the Pharisees provided a form of religion that had little or no transformative power, but it kept their temples open and their institutional machine running.

The Sadducees of Jesus' day were those wealthy business and liberal religious interests that supported Rome and played cozy with Rome to protect their self-interests, which did not go beyond the borders of this world (Sadducees did not believe in immortality). They rationalized their compromising with Rome’s Legions as being in the best interests of national security and peace, although they didn’t “give a damn” about the poor and the enslaved that greatly outnumbered their up-and-out crowd.

I saw something in the intellect and ethic of young Barack Obama that I thought offered political potential--hope. I found him echoing many issues (not all by any means) that I supported. I gave him broad support right up to this day, much to the chagrin of some friends and professional peers. And when the CBS Evening News tells me my President says he will use Executive Powers, if necessary in his economic push, to bring some relief to the unemployed, the most vulnerable, et al; I say, “Go for it, Man; and God bless you!”

Yes, I've heard him accused of dictatorial powers. I know this decision will be politicized, polarized, and terrorized by politicians who can't keep their hands in their own pockets even in a Polar Vortex. Mr. Obama will be accused of every un-American piece of black crepe history his accusers can think of. One black commentator already insinuated Obama deserved hanging. So; let the rank and file scream Hitlerism, Russian Socialism, red or pink, or demonic; I call their attitudinal behavior the ultimate of atheistic humanism. It is a survival of the fittest, that determination to go to any length necessary to protect their turf.

On the other hand, the President could acquiesce to the status quo; he could be satisfied that he has accumulated enough coin of his own and he need not concern himself with the poor, the vulnerable, and those otherwise ignored by the system. There was an abundance of that in Jesus day, among both the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The President could listen to those who entangle the political system in debate over this or that issue and ignore/neglect the importance of the economic issue. Neither he nor Congress need worry about their economics, or health care, or public security, or ... ad infinitum.

YET, let the President support an issue that involves decided ethical and moral issues; or, let him stand up and declare himself in support of a huge portion of our populace has great personal stakes in this matter; or, let him dare to stick his neck out, or put his head on the chopping block and agree to support an issue with strong biblical/Christian overtones …DAMN the Traitor! For whatever reason - too drastic a “Change!”

Giving (Zakat) is the third of five pillars of Islam, along with giving testimony of the one true God, fasting, praying, and pilgrimaging. Muslims are required to give a percentage of their assets and many give based on need and out of compassion. Does not the Bible declare it better to give than to receive? Listen to the words of Jesus, who based his own testimony on teaching only the words of the one true God. Most prominent among Jesus’ teachings:

1) LOVE God supremely;

2) Doing this calls for LOVING your neighbor as yourself;

3) When most vulnerable, Jesus told his 12-disciples, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, for in this way the world will know you are my disciples. Elsewhere He is quoted …

4)  Then He will answer them, saying, "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ And these will go away into ever- lasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:45-46 NKJV).

From Warner’s World,

I salute the president for putting himself on the sacrificial altar by standing for a growing segment of humanity the majority no longer willingly shares life with ... contrary to the Scriptures I am . . . walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com

That Rugged Individualism We So Love

I grew up viewing myself as rather independent; in general, something of a loner. Our culture highly values this politic of rugged, frontier individualism. We admire self-made individuals who stand on the peak of success, and we press to the front of the line to purchase their best-selling autobiographies. The very idea of playing Lone Ranger makes our blood pump with ecstasy as we romanticize wild-west living notion of being fortified by a sturdy don’t-need-anybody individualism.

Ayn Rand, the Russian-born atheist, stands at the altar as today’s High Priestess of this cult of individualism. Her philosophy suggests she has little good to say about religion. Her 1964 Playboy interview, posted on the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights website, quotes her conclusion that religious faith is “a negation of human reason” and charity lacks virtue. If any civilization is to survive, Rand insisted, “it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject” (italics addded/

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ayn_rand.html#UpYK5WEcDpav2w6M.99).

Like you, I admire the achievements of singularly achieving individuals. Both in the church and out, we lift their examples from everyday life and exalt them for their stellar achievements. Especially inspiring is the story of Edmund Hillary, but his achievement reveals a truth we seldom hear, and most never hear the true story.

“Truth in Advertising” should demand that we tell the truth of the matter; for the great truth is that Hillary’s conquest of Everest was not the conquest of a single man. As one author described it, the conquest of Mount Everest was a feat of modern management. It became the cooperative effort of a team of committed participants that conquered via their community.

It all began with Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Nergay. It became their story as they mobilized and coordinated a dozen climbers, 35 Sherpa  guides, 350 partners, and 3,600 pounds of equipment and supplies.

 

Whether you are Mormon politician Mitt Romney, U. S. President Barack Obama, CEO Pandit of Citibank Corporation, or the much-admired Edmund Hillary, successful living remains primarily a community event. President Obama can do little without the cooperation of the Congress. Chairman Pandit of Citibank Corporation can do little without his faithful core of managers, administrators, and employees. Even Sir Edmund could not stand on Mount Everest without the coordinated efforts of his dozens of guides, his numerous and varied partners, and tons of equipment and supplies.

Think what you will, but the conclusion of the matter is that without our time-consuming social networks, the rugged individualism that we so fervently worship, however self-made we may believe we are, we remain merely mythic gods suffering from delusional self-adulation. John Donne said it best in the classic summary for which we most remember him, which I have freely paraphrased: no man is an island unto himself; rather, we are all fragments of a piece of that continent called humanity.

Donne was only saying in his unique way what Jesus had already said when he instructed his disciples to love their neighbors as themselves Truth is; you can’t keep company with Jesus for long without developing better relationships with your neighbors, or even your enemies.

From Warner’s World, I am walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com