Does God Have a Good Reputation?

“What is the chief end of man?”  I first remember hearing that question when I was a first-grader in the ARP Church where I was raised.  It is a question that speaks to the very purpose of life.  It is akin to the question, “Why are we here?”  According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the chief end of man is, “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

The word “glorify” is foreign to our current culture, so I will explain it to the best of my understanding.  If you take a metal rod and place one end into a very hot fire, that end will begin to glow.  You could say that the glowing end of the rod is “glorying.”

Now to relate that to a person, to “glorify” a person is to spread information about them that will cause them to have a glowing reputation.  When a person has a good reputation, he or she is admired and trusted.  They are celebrated for their honorable character and conduct.

To give another kind of example, many years ago, I was a sales representative for a woodworking supply company.  My job was to travel around the western part of North Carolina, visiting woodworking shops and companies and explaining to them the benefits of doing business with the company I represented.  Through personal conduct and genuine enthusiasm, I served the customer and told the story of my company in a way that caused them to be famous with my customers.  In other words, I was glorifying my company.

It follows then that my main purpose in life, if the Catechism is right, is to make God famous.  It is to represent him in such a way that through my personal conduct and genuine enthusiasm, people admire and trust him.  That is a tall order.  It is a seven-day a week job.  It means that I have a responsibility to either reflect God’s character at all times or, if I fail, to explain that the failure was mine and not the one I represent.

Back to the example of being a sales rep, if I do a good job, both the reputation of the company and sales should increase.  If I do a poor job, both the reputation of the company and sales may drop and the company will probably fire me.

I want to relate that to a statistic that I heard recently.  According to the book, The American Church in Crisis, by David Olson, approximately 3000 churches in America close their doors, essentially going out of business, each year.  At first that statistic bothered me, then I realized that maybe they were not doing a good job of representing God, so he fired them.  If that is the case, church doors closing may be a good thing as long as new ones start and existing ones that are doing a good job take up the slack.  If a church is causing God’s reputation to be diminished, I want it to close, soon.

Currently, I attend a church that has a good reputation in the community.  But what is even more important to me is that they are deeply concerned with God’s reputation.  They work very hard at following Jesus seven days a week in everything they do.

That is what I want to do, follow Jesus seven days a week.  You see, I figure that if my faith is not good enough for the other six days a week, it is a waste of time to practice in only on Sunday.  If my belief system has no answers for what I do on Monday, it has no value on Sunday.

However, because my faith does have answers for all seven days a week, God has an excellent reputation with me.  I just hope that I represent him well.

Permission to Fail

I no longer worry too much about my failures and shortcomings.  I am human.  I will never be perfect.  While I do want to excel in my areas of strength, I don’t stress too much when my best efforts come up short.  If I fail, the world still goes on.  Other opportunities for success will come.  I want to learn from my failures and position myself to succeed the next time an opportunity comes, but there is no value in stressing about a failure as long as I did my best.

One of the best things about people is that they tend to forgive our failures if we are willing to get up and try again.  Abraham Lincoln lost a number of elections, but what we remember about him is his successes.  Most people know that he was our sixteenth president, but only a few can name even one of the many elections he lost.

As long as you don’t do things that are damaging to yourself or others, it only takes a few modest victories in your life to be remembered as a success.

Do not concern yourself too much with the successes or failures of other people.  Their performance has nothing to do with you.  Put on your blinders; focus on your own game and then play.  Put in the discipline, make the preparations and then do your best.

Success looks different for each of us because we are all dealt different hands.  Ultimately, you will not be judged by how much success you had, but by how well you played the hand you were dealt.  A man with one leg will not be judged because he could not win the 100 meter dash; instead he will be cheered because he tried.

Do not wish your life away, yearning for opportunities that may never come.  Perform well the task at hand.  You may be surprised by the opportunities that come from people you had no idea were watching.

My wife used to tell our children, “If you will just do what you are supposed to do, you will stand out.”  She was right and it worked for them.  They learned early to consistently fulfill what was required.  The result, they stood out.  Many people do not consistently fulfill their basic responsibilities, and then can’t figure out why life has passed them by.

You will be treated unfairly.  You will be passed over.  You will suffer setbacks.  It is all a part of the human condition.  Keep plugging along anyway.  Forgive those who treat you badly.  Realize that most of the time you will not be the “favored one.”  Understand that we live in a broken world that is full of potholes and obstructions.  Then, do what you are supposed to do.

I know a number of people in their mid-thirties to early forties who have experienced a significant amount of personal and financial success, but were blind-sided by the recent economic downturn.  They were unfortunate in that they learned to invest in an economy that had only experienced growth during their entire working life.  They had seen some scattered busts and problems, but nothing like the current situation.  As a result, they were caught unprepared, over-leveraged and over-extended.  Now they know.  Bad things can happen.  Economies always turn down eventually.  In the future many of them will be wiser.  Many who are feeling the pain of our current economy will make adjustments that will prevent the same kind of pain in the future.  Unfortunately, some will not learn.

Make sure you are one of the wise ones.  Understand that today’s failures contain the seeds of tomorrows’ successes.  When you comprehend that, you will see that failure is only failure when you do not learn its lessons.  Then you will realize that you have permission to fail.

Women and Beauty, One Man’s Opinion

I recently saw a news clip of models on a runway.  My first thought was, “Good grief girls, go get yourself a burger and a shake.”  I don’t know where the idea came from in the fashion and entertainment industry that skinny equals beautiful, but it certainly didn’t come from me or any man I know.  What kind of twisted world considers a woman who is average sized to be plus sized?  Fortunately, I am seeing a trend in the other direction, but the problem is still pervasive.

In 1994, I was forty years old, watching TV with my wife’s stepfather, Turner Rogers who was in his early eighties at the time.  Sophia Loren, who had just turned sixty, was being interviewed.  I mentioned that she was still very beautiful.  Turner agreed.  I then began to reflect on how my idea of beauty had changed through the years.  As a teen, I only considered girls in their teens and twenties to be beautiful.  As I entered my twenties, women in their thirties looked beautiful.  In my thirties, my concept of beauty continued to expand and at forty, I considered a woman in her sixties to be beautiful.  Without looking away from the TV and with a mischievous grin on his face, Turner said, “Wait until you’re my age, then they all look good.”

Looking at paintings of the old masters from previous centuries, the women in the paintings would today be considered heavy or plus sized.  In their day, they were the standard of beauty.  I have read that in 1800’s Australia, a man of wealth wanted to have a fat wife and fat children to show evidence of his wealth.  In Mauritania, a country in West Africa, many men prefer to marry obese women because they are considered to be the most beautiful.

I am not advocating obesity, which is unhealthy, but common sense.  A healthy size looks different on each woman.

Beauty trends practiced by other cultures are unusual to us, but are normal to them.  For example, the Kayan women of Burma wear coils of neck rings to enhance their beauty.  Foot binding was practiced in China for about one thousand years, only ending in the early part of the twentieth century.  In some parts of Africa and Amazonia today, women adhere to the practice of using a lip plate to enhance their beauty.

Before you make fun of some of the beauty practices of other cultures, consider some of the things that are common practices in our culture today.  Women allow physicians to cut them surgically and place silicone pads into their body.  Others have fat sucked away in a procedure called liposuction.  Another common practice is surgery to change the size and shape of facial features, all this, in an attempt to meet the demands of our culture’s ideals of beauty.

My point is this: there is no universal standard of beauty.  Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.  Ideals of beauty are subjective, influenced by time, place, culture and power.  If a woman’s appearance happens to fall outside the established limits of what is considered beautiful by the culture in which she lives, she will be less favored by some parts of that society.  In our culture, a woman may be intelligent, funny and industrious and yes, in my eyes, beautiful; but these things count less than whether she can fit into a size two dress and have well placed facial features.  We are all losers because of this lie.

Most of the fashion and entertainment industry is a very sick place.  It uses women for its own purpose and then spits them out when they are no longer perfect.  This is the message I want to communicate to the women and girls who matter to me: “Be healthy, be fit and be confident and you will be beautiful to me.”  While some adhere to false standards of beauty, real men do not.  Real men appreciate the natural beauty of the women God has placed in their lives.

Filter Your Thoughts

Recent news of interest is that Sandra Bullock’s husband cheated on her.  While the information is interesting, it is not valuable.  Many things in life are interesting, intriguing and even exciting, but they have no value.  They capture our interest; but they are a distraction from things that matter.

As you work through your day, consider these questions, “Is this thought worthy of my attention or is it a distraction?”  “Does this thought add value to my life?”  “Is this thought worth the energy it will expend and the time it will take?”  As the popular speaker Joyce Meyer frequently says, “Think about what you are thinking about.”

Run your thoughts through these seven filters.  If a thought becomes trapped in one or more of these filters, examine it to assure that it is worthy of your mental energy.

• Truth Filter If information that comes to you is not true, it is a waste of time to think about it, so ask yourself, “Is it true?”  If not, it is best to dismiss the thought and think about something else.
• Weight Filter If Sandra Bullock’s husband, Jesse James, has an affair, unless you are connected to them in some way, that information is trivial.  It has no weight.  I am sorry it happened to her, but it is of no consequence.  Just because Sandra and Jesse are famous does not mean that they are important to you.  If one of your family members loses a job or has a medical problem, that is a weighty matter.  If you have a perplexing difficulty in your work, that has weight.  Weighty matters are the things you are responsible for, the things that affect you personally and the things that are significant.  All the other things are trivial.
• Timing Filter There is a time and place for everything; even your trivial thoughts.  Trivia is good for de-stressing and entertainment.  You need some time for the de-stressing that can come from entertainment, so save trivial thoughts for that time.  You may be entertaining a good thought, but at the wrong time, because it is the time to deal with responsibilities and the thoughts related to them.
• Responsibility Filter If a task is your responsibility, you should think about it, plan for it and do it.  If it not your responsibility, you should pass the information to the responsible party and allow them to deal with it.  Taking time to look after other’s responsibilities distracts you from fulfilling your own.  You can easily become overwhelmed with our own responsibilities.  Taking on the responsibilities of others can make a difficult life miserable.
• Temptation Filter The word, titillate, means to excite with pleasure.  Most advertisements intend to titillate.  Being excited about something pleasurable is not a bad thing in itself; but it is bad when it is destructive to you or to others.  For example, if you are hungry and it is near mealtime, thinking about a satisfying meal is good.  However, if you are full and obsessing about a fattening dessert; that could be destructive.  Develop strategies to keep your mind off things that are potentially destructive and on things that matter.
• Peace Filter Does the thought give you inner peace or does it cause you to recoil?  We should not seek to avoid all unpleasant thoughts; but there is no need to entertain cringe-producing thoughts without filtering the unnecessary ones.  It takes energy to deal with unpleasant thoughts.  You need to maintain high-energy levels to be at your best throughout the day.  Do not waste your mental energy dealing with thoughts that sap your energy and cut into your productivity.  On the other hand, thinking about things that are beautiful, excellent, or worthy of honor has the ability to energize you.  What I am suggesting is not just thinking happy thoughts; but managing your thoughts so that you are controlling them instead of letting them control you.
• Excellence Filter Does the thought produce excellence or does it promote slackness.  You should avoid thoughts that tell you things like, “That’s good enough,” or “No one will notice if you let it slide just this once.”  Excellence says, “I am going to give it my best shot,” and “I will improve on my last attempt.”  Be careful, excellence is not the same as perfection.  You will never achieve perfection.  It is a waste of energy to try.  However, excellence is a worthy pursuit.

If you find that most of your thoughts are caught in one or more of these filters and you are experiencing a sense of meaningless in your life, you should consider changing your thinking.  Fill your mind with things that matter.

Confidence is Better than Self-Esteem

Around 1990, when the country was in the midst of being mesmerized with the Self-Esteem Movement, my son Dan, who was about seven, received a trophy for playing soccer.  He was a very intelligent boy, a good student with an outgoing personality; but he was not a good athlete.  He never scored a goal or made any significant, game-changing plays; but he still got a trophy.  In fact, as was common in those days, everyone on the team got a trophy.  They were told that everyone on the team was equally important, everyone was equally good and everyone was equally valuable to the team.

Dan had actually earned other trophies for things that he did accomplish.  He had a shelf to display those trophies.  One day I noticed that the soccer trophy was not with the ones he considered valuable.  I asked him why.  He responded rather matter-of-factly, “I didn’t do anything to earn it.”  He knew.  He wasn’t fooled.  No matter what the adults said, he knew the difference between an award and false recognition.

The officers of the soccer league had bought into the philosophy of the Self-Esteem Movement that you improve a child simply by telling him that he is wonderful.  The only ones fooled were the adults.  The children knew better.  They could tell who the talented ones were.

Many people grow up hearing, “You can be anything you want to be.”  However, that is not true.  You can live a significant life.  You can accomplish noteworthy achievements; but you cannot be anything you may want to be.   The truth is; we are incomplete, bent and broken from birth, and therefore in need of correction, instruction and encouragement.  We also have a set of talents, intelligences and abilities that make us well-suited for some things and not well-suited for others.

Understanding and accepting our limitations is an important part of growing to maturity.  For example, when I was a child, I fantasized about being a professional basketball player.  My first limitation was that I was short, so I focused on the guard position.  However, I was not able to overcome being height-challenged by also being slow and unable to jump.  Then other limitations began to crop up.  It was not devastating news when it began to dawn on me that I was never going to be a professional basketball player.  I just shifted my attention to other possibilities.  It was good that I was not encouraged to pursue basketball.  I was not well suited for it.  Instead, I was encouraged to try other things.  I did, and found that I enjoyed them even more.

Rather than falsely building a child’s self-esteem through meaningless clichés, it is better to build his confidence by developing in him the disciplines, skills and character necessary to achieve in his areas of talent and strength.  Psychologist Roy Baumeister in his research on Self-Esteem, Narcissism and Aggression, concluded that artificially enhanced self-esteem can become a roadblock to future success.  For example, high self-esteem can actually become narcissism and thus is not a predictor of future success.  He found that prisons are populated with many violent people with high self-esteem that has turned into narcissism.  Too often, narcissism has been the unintended result of the Self-Esteem Movement.

If a person grows up thinking, “I can be anything I want to be,” without developing his talents, skills and character, he is being set up for disappointment.  If he grows up telling himself or being told that he is something when he is not, his self-esteem is a delusion.  Self-esteem without the requisite skills, disciplines and character can turn into self-deception.  It is better to have an accurate self-assessment and build on it.

While I doubt the value of the Self-Esteem Movement, I do place a high value on confidence.  Genuine confidence comes from living in a loving environment coupled with developing the character, skills and disciplines necessary for achievement in a specific area.

An objective analysis of your strengths and limitations is useful information.  Then, after developing yourself, you can take pride in yourself for your own accomplishments.  An accurate assessment of talents and abilities is better than believing deception.  As a basketball player at a major university once said when informed that he had a lot of potential, “Well, as my mother always told me, ‘Potential means you haven’t done it yet.’”  Because he made the correct correlation between skill development and success and because he had learned to evaluate accurately where he stood in relation to his competition, he was able to develop his skills to the point where he made it to the very high level of Division 1 college basketball.

While my son was not a good athlete, he was a good student.  My wife and I were always honest with him about his strengths and weaknesses.  In addition, we assured him that our love for him was a constant in spite of his weaknesses and failures.  We then directed him toward the areas that would give him the greatest opportunities for success.

As his parents, we evaluated his talents and interests.  When he showed an interest in an area of strength, we took the initiative to find opportunities for him to develop that interest.  We also made sure that along with the skill development necessary for success that he was also developing the character and disciplines necessary for achievement.  The result is that he grew up with a great deal of confidence despite not having significant athletic ability, which is normally very important to most boys.  When he began to realize that athletics were not his strong suit, he was disappointed; but he was in a supportive environment, so he was able to transition toward his strengths.

Listed below are points that I consider important to develop confidence.  These ideas have been born out of my and my wife’s experience at raising our three children, who are now all successful adults with children of their own.

On Developing Confidence

• Find your passions.  If you are not passionate about what you are doing, those who do have passion will beat you in the end.  They will enthusiastically put in the extra time and effort to excel. I recently read something Bob Parsons, the founder of Go Daddy, said.  He related that his father once told him, “When you love something, it tells you its secrets.”  Those who are passionate about something will uncover its secrets.  I have found that to be true personally.  When I was a boy, I developed an interest in art and woodworking.  Because those things were a passion and not just a passing interest, I pursued them until they began to give up their secrets.  The result is that I have been able to develop expertise in those disciplines along with a corresponding increase in confidence.
• Strengthen your strengths.  We often hear that we need to strengthen our weaknesses.  While there is truth in that, achievement tends to occur most in our areas of strength.  If we strengthen our strengths, we develop a competitive edge in the place we are most likely to experience significant accomplishment.  When you find a strength that you are passionate about, pursue it with gusto.
• Develop character.  Character is the ability to keep doing the right thing at the right time over and over until success comes.  Character requires discipline.  If you do not have self-discipline, you will need to set up outside controls to manage you destructive behaviors.  Our daughters had better impulse control than our son, so they did not need as much attention to keep them on task.  Some children, and in fact, some adults need tighter controls to succeed, which leads to the next point.
• Establish boundaries.  Success requires that you avoid distractions that hinder you.  That means that you need to avoid people, places and things that encumber or distract you.  It also means that you need to surround yourself with the people and things that contribute to success.  General Robert E. Lee is credited with the quote, “I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it.”  Because whiskey was a distraction, he put a boundary around its use.  Everyone who is successful has put boundaries in place to keep destructive people and things away.
• Practice, practice, practice.  You have to spend a great deal of time at something to develop proficiency.  You have to do it until it becomes second nature.  You have to practice it until you can do it without thinking about it.  As your excellence at a task increases, your pleasure in doing it increases. Along with the increase in skill comes an increase in confidence.
• Anticipate creativity.  The more skill, confidence and character you develop in a discipline, the more you will understand it.  Along with greater understanding comes a corresponding increase in creativity.  Understanding will reveal new applications and open new pathways.  That is the essence of creativity.
• Find unconditional love.  Finding unconditional love is often easier said than done.  If you know you can fail and still be loved unconditionally you can develop confidence.  Unconditional love is a platform that encourages experimentation and risk-taking.  It gives permission to try; and then fail, without fear.  It broadens horizons.  It makes it OK to be less than the best.  Unconditional love is honest about strengths and weaknesses while encouraging us to keep trying until we succeed.  Best of all, unconditional love joins in the celebration when success comes.  Find people who will love you unconditionally and embrace them.  In addition, put up boundaries between yourself and those who love in a manipulative way.  We are all fragile.  We need to protect ourselves from those who tear us down.

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Confidence

Artificially boosting self-esteem can backfire.  My son, as a boy, understood that a trophy for participation was meaningless.  He knew some of his strengths and he knew the difference between achievement and undeserved rewards.  He appreciated the difference.

Dan is now 26.  He is the youngest of our children.  We have two daughters, Anna and Kate.  They have all been very successful.  All three earned scholarships to a university.  All have successful careers.  Anna has been a top executive in a major corporation and Dan and Kate are both excellent schoolteachers.  They were all raised in a middle-class environment without any special privileges or advantages.

If you really want to help someone succeed or have more success yourself, there are no shortcuts.  Artificially boosting self-esteem through false praise and awards is not effective.  Confidence comes from knowing you are loved and accepted even when you fail and from developing the skills, character and disciplines necessary for success.

Anna’s daughter, Lily, is learning Irish dance.  It has ignited her passion.  In addition to dance lessons, she searches the internet during her spare time, looking for dance videos that teach her more moves; then she practices, practices, practices.  If she has a spare moment, she will work on her dance moves.  This passionate commitment, coupled with living in a loving, supportive environment has resulted in her having a growing confidence in herself.  Good self-esteem is a natural result.  In addition, awards have come.  In her first competition, against sixteen other dancers, she came in first place in two of her four performances.

Passionate practice done in a supportive environment results in achievement which yields confidence.