Leadership

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and Why No One Can Get (or Give) Any

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I’ve got about six months until I hit 50. That milestone isn’t sitting well with me, though.

Part of my unrest is that the major tropes of my youth with regard to the accumulation of years have failed. Or perhaps I should say that I failed to fulfill them.

By the time you are 50, you are supposed to be in the prime of your career. You are a leader in your community. Your savings account is overflowing. You have power. Your words matter to people and they listen to you because you are a success.

At least that is what I grew up believing because that’s what we were all taught to believe.

Problem is, I haven’t achieved any of those. My careers (yes, multiple) have all been derailed at one point or another by uncontrollable economic factors, so this elusive “prime” I keep hearing about seems to be some mysterious other’s to enjoy. I’m not rich, so I have no power, since the money = power equation only grows stronger the larger the number of years on the calendar. Politics seems to be the only avenue to leadership anymore, and no party will have me. And since achievements in those preceding traits are the sole signal for success in our society today (with the possible exception of scandal, so there’s at least that still open), I’ll never be a worldly success.

They say that youth is wasted on the young, and I understand this more and more. Supposedly, the counterbalance is wisdom, but no one cares about wisdom. In an age of knowledge, where Google can give you answers to nearly any question you have, and it’s all within reach of a ubiquitous cell phone, what is wisdom? The Internet is filled with dime store philosophers, and most days anymore, I feel like just another of their horde. Name a topic and there’s a pundit for it.

So if none of this works, what is left for the guy who has managed to get to 50 years without making a total wreck of life?

I was taught to always refer to adults with “Mr.,”Mrs.,” or “Miss” preceding their surname. Even when I was in my 20s and 30s, my parents’ peers were still “Mr. Kreider” or “Mrs. Frey,” not “Joe” or “Phyllis.”

This gave those neighborhood stalwarts some ethereal cachet that made them different from me. Better. Smarter. More worthy of respect.

Just the other day, I was out with my son, and we ran into the daughter of a friend. She’s 19-21, if my faulty memory serves, and she called out to me by saying, “Hello, Mr. Edelen.”

I found it almost startling to hear “Mr. Edelen.” Perhaps I am now an adult, part of that elusive set of peerage that reserved such titular prefixes for the friends of my deceased parents.

If anything, that callout got me thinking more deeply about respect.

If none of the other standards for adulthood drilled into me in my youth can be assumed, surely respect can. Yet despite being called Mr. Edelen by one well-raised young lady, I think that more of us can identify with Rodney Dangerfield.Rodney Dangerfield - No respect

Getting to 50 without screwing up one’s life no longer merits the special favor of respect. Perhaps it never should have in the first place. We keep hearing that respect must be earned, and if anything, that’s still the prevailing thought.

Yet if our societal beliefs on respect are to be grasped, no one is earning respect.

The presidency used to be a position of respect. I don’t know if that was forever shot down by the presence of presidential protein on an intern’s dress, but since that event, neither of our last two presidents have garnered any respect. Even from Christians, respect may be talked about with regard to the POTUS, and we can blabber with the best of ’em about Founding Fathers and the greatness of America, but the words we say about our president don’t encompass respect.

In fact, even in the Church today, I can’t think of anyone who gets any respect. The world at large has a built-in reflex for questioning authority, and that seems to have slid down the gutter into the American Church.

Don’t believe me? Consider the following.

An elder from your church pulls you aside some Sunday and says, “I notice your giving has been down this year. What can we do about that?”

For many of us, the first thought is, Take a long walk off a short pier, buddy.

Even if we substitute pastor for elder in that scene, nothing improves. Doesn’t matter who the person is, we don’t want anyone telling us we’re doing it wrong.

But, Dan, the giving thing is a naturally divisive issue, you may say. And I know you don’t ascribe to a New Testament tithe, anyway. OK, then have the elder or pastor suggest that you’re not spending enough of your time in service to either the church or the community. Or that a church leader noticed a sin in your life you may need to address. Or that you might think you’re a gifted teacher, but that class you really want to teach is not what the church needs from you now. Or that you’re not as gifted in teaching as you think you are, and that perhaps your gift is driving the church bus.

How quickly the thought becomes, So which other churches can I visit next Sunday?

We can talk all we want about respect, but no one seems to get any anymore. We are so selfish and believe ourselves so wise, that no one can speak into our lives with any authority and have us instantly consider his or her words worthwhile simply because who he or she is demands respect.

We don’t honor offices or the people who inhabit them. Titles now mean nothing. We have become like cliffs of granite, immovable, unswayable, and suitable only for jumping off for those who would suggest we move or sway.

Sure, plenty of Christian leaders have abused their authority. Sure, some people may not be worthy of respect.

But is anyone?

I maybe a poor example of human being and perhaps an even lousier Christian. Maybe respect should not be afforded me simply because I’ve hung around nearly 50 years.

Yet what else is there? If we can’t respect those people who are still standing after 50 years or more, especially within the Church, what hope do we have to ever move anything—including the Church—forward? Instead, we may be dooming ourselves to a downward spiral of selfishness that keeps crying out for others to respect us, even as we fail to respect anyone else.

Various Spring Thursday Musings

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A variety of thoughts on this sunny April Thursday:

+ I was thinking how power is the modern equivalent of will. We want to have power over all aspects of our lives, with powerlessness one of the most hated of all hateful ideas. But if we take Christ’s “not my will, but yours, be done” and do the word swap, how would it impact the way we live? What does it mean to surrender power to a higher authority in a society where individualism reigns and each person demands the right to control his or her life?

+ In keeping with that thought, whatever happened in the Church to the concept of corporate sin? And how are we worse off for its loss?

+ There is something odd happening in the Church when thousands (or even millions) of American Christians are lamenting Rick Santorum’s leaving the presidential race. A few months ago, not one person was clamoring for Santorum to be president, and yet when it appears he will not be, people are disappointed. As for Mitt Romney, one can say the same thing. I mean, who was screaming for him to occupy the White House? All this becomes even more puzzling when one considers my previous thoughts on power.

+ Not a day goes by when I don’t consider that the general emotional outlook of this country is nowhere near as healthy as it was when I was younger. Yes, yes, yes, “the olden days were better” someone will quote at me with a wink, but still.

+ I get the feeling also that in the rush to be good Christians, we have forgotten Jesus.

+ Now that everyone is on Facebook (and a few lonely souls inhabit Google +), can any of us say our interpersonal relationships are better?

+ Along those lines, the last of my small groups stopped meeting. I used to be part of four or five at a time. Now, none. That makes me sad. Looks like I’ll be bowling alone.

+ So far, 2012 has been a lovely year weatherwise. But here in SW Ohio, we were in the 80s in February, 70s in March, and now 60s in April. Should we expect snow in July?

+ Why is it that so few people seem to be able to commit to anything anymore? What happened to a person’s word? Does that concept mean anything today?

+ It’s sad, but the people who seem to do the most Bible study are often the ones who miss the most obvious portions of the Bible. Or they try like the dickens to explain away the hard parts (or the parts they are failing to live up to) by going all systematic theology on us. Anymore, I don’t have a lot of interest in what the self-labeled scholars are saying. And when someone recommends a recently written book on Christian subjects, my reaction is meh, since I rarely read any that make any astute points that challenge the status quo (or they fail to provide workable solutions when they do post a challenge). In short, people just aren’t using Holy Spirit sense, which is the only kind of spiritual insight that matters.

+ Right now, Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church is writing one of the best Christian blogs on the Internet. He should be a regular read for everyone, because he is not afraid to touch verboten subjects and question the crazy way we Christians practice the Faith.

+ At The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia, Arthur Sido is regularly writing some insightful posts in the same vein as Knox’s.

The Real Reason Why Young People Are Leaving the Church

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A few weeks back, I touched on the issue of the increasing loss of people under 30 years of age in our churches (“The Church’s Lost Tribe“). The post was less about my thoughts and more about reader explanations for why this well-documented loss is occurring.

I’ll offer my thoughts today, but first, one more commentator.

Skye Jethani, one of the ascending names in post-Evangelicalism, attempts to pin the reason on the Internet’s favorite whipping boy: right-wing politics. Or more specifically, the Religious Right / Moral Majority interpretation of right-wing politics. For more, read his “Christianism Leads to Atheism” post.

Jethani cites an article “God and Caesar in America: Why Mixing Religion and Politics is Bad for Both” and attempts to data mine it. But like a bad doctor who automatically equates all headaches with brain tumors, Jethani assigns blame to the symptom rather than to the underlying disease.

In Jethani’s post, he states young people today are more politically liberal than older people. But if recent figures in the GOP primary are an indication, this is more a media sacred cow than reality. The most conservative candidate running is Ron Paul, and the hidden story is that Paul is crushing all the other GOP hopefuls in the 18-30 age demographic, winning (at last count) that group in every state that has held a primary. (If the 18-30 demographic, which has never been consistently enthusiastic about primaries, actually got to the polls in higher numbers, this might be a different race.) Even more compelling is that Paul is drawing young people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and are disillusioned with that president’s broken promises.

What young people find compelling in Ron Paul is he’s not ringmastering a dog and pony show. There are no smoke and mirrors. With Paul, they see a man who is not a political reptile but an authentic conservative from before the neo-cons grabbed control. They see a man with a real plan and genuine vision to fix problems and not just talk, talk, talk. To young people, authenticity matters more than just about any other trait. As they see it, Ron Paul lives what he believes, and what he believes rings true to them.

Can you see where this is going?

Oddly, the title of Jethani’s piece is more accurate than what follows in his post. Christianism does lead to atheism because Christianism (which is to Christianity as truthiness is to truth) isn’t genuine Christianity. It’s a twisted clone, inauthentic to the core.

It’s not that young people don’t like the politics of churches today. What they can’t stand is the dog and pony show that our churches have become. Dog and pony showWhat throws Jethani and others is that Christian political maneuvering is nothing more than a natural outgrowth of churches gone bad. It rushes into the vacuum left behind when genuine Christianity is gutted. The political mess and the culture wars are symptoms, but they are not the root of the disease.

Young people aren’t stupid. They can read the Book of Acts too. And the Church they find there is radically unlike the American Church of 2012.

If you want to blame a demographic for stupidity, look at the 35-65 group. We’re the ones that created these bogus churches that are all fluff and no substance. We’re the ones who are not feeding the poor, not evangelizing the world, not living in community, not building up each other’s gifts, not looking out for the needy in our own ranks, and generally disregarding every characteristic of the Church in Acts that made it vital, living, and desperately necessary to the lives of those early disciples. Young people today are not interested in boarding a train that has derailed. That many of us with some “maturity” are is a sign of our own ignorance.

Here’s the kicker: More and more of us who have been Christians for decades are fed up with pointless churches. We’re sick of the show too. With so many churches not living up to the standard we read in Acts, my peers and I will be the next group to go missing.

Christian commentators are wringing their hands over young people who when asked what their religion is say “none.” Honestly, I say good for those young people. Because the last thing the Church needs is more religion. What we need is Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives and for the Church to stop with the sideshows and to start looking less like a carnival and more like the authentic faith it was almost 2,000 years ago.

If that happens, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the 18-30 year olds say, “What took you so long?”