MAY WE ALL BE IRISH, TECHNITES, WHAT ARE THE THREE THINGS THAT CREATE A MEANINGFUL LIFE?

Thought Provoking Posts from James Emery White - Church & Culture Blog

MAY WE ALL BE IRISH - It was a pagan world, outside the borders of the accepted disciplines and understandings of civilization.  But spiritual.  Deeply spiritual.  The supernatural was everywhere, in places and days, people and events, filling their lives with images, symbols and ritual.  The earth and all in it was sacred; gods and goddesses roamed the landscape; the world of magic was embraced; but there was no God who sat in Heaven, and no knowledge of a Christ who had come to earth. 

Into this postmodern milieu, 1500 years before postmodernism was born, came Patrick, the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland (c. 5th century).  

 

Patrick did not come to his task by choice.  Kidnapped at the age of fifteen from his father’s villa in Britain, he was enslaved in Ireland and made to serve as a shepherd.  There he came into the fullness of Christian faith, and after six years of praying, finally made his escape.  But upon reaching his homeland, he had a dream where a man who seemed to come from Ireland handed him a letter titled “The Voice of the Irish,” and at the same time heard the voices of those who lived “beside the Wood of Foclut, which lies near the Western Sea” asking him to “come back and walk once more among us.”  Patrick writes that he was “pierced to my heart’s core.”

 

Patrick returned to Ireland.  Not as a slave, but as a missionary.

 

The legends surrounding Patrick are, well, legendary.  He reportedly drove the snakes out of Ireland into the sea.  Whether true or not, there are no snakes in Ireland to this day.  Another is that he used the shamrock to explain the Trinity.  There may be some truth to this; pointing back to Patrick, the shamrock is the national flower of Ireland.  He is to have confronted and overpowered the druids; fasted for forty days and nights on a holy mountain; and openly challenged a king by lighting a fire for an Easter celebration in open opposition to the edict that only one fire was to burn in the land, and that for the pagan feast of Bealtaine.

 

What is most apparent is that Patrick looked for ways to connect the message of Christ to a pagan, but supernaturalized, world.  In doing so, he imaginatively put himself in the position of the Irish.  Looking for what they held in common, Patrick made it clear that he, too, embraced a world full of magic.  As Thomas Cahill noted, the difference between Patrick’s magic and the magic of the druids was that in Patrick’s world, “all beings and events come from the hand of a good God”.  When Patrick arrived, the Irish were still practicing human sacrifice; Patrick made it clear that through Christ’s supreme sacrifice, such offerings were no longer needed.  Patrick took an entire culture’s leanings toward the spiritual and led them to Christ.

 

During Patrick’s time, all who lived outside of the boundaries, or walls, of Rome were called “barbarians” (literally, “without the walls”), and were to be avoided at all costs.  The Irish were barbarians.  Cahill writes that Patrick was the first Christian missionary to a culture outside of Rome’s world; “The step he took was in its way as bold as Columbus’s.”  Patrick simply wrote, “I came in God’s strength...and had nothing to fear.”  As a result, Maire B. De Paor writes that Patrick “not only changed the course of Irish history but made Ireland the burning and shining light of barbarian Europe for the best part of the next thousand years.”

 

So on the day that “everyone is Irish,” let’s wish for it to be of the kind modeled by the saint whose name marks the day.

 

James Emery White

You know much about the Irish?  Click HERE to take a quick quiz.

More thoughts from Church & Culture Blog....

TECHNITES - Do you recall the tower of Babel?

Of course you do. It’s become a cultural touchstone, but not one that I think is clearly understood.

Because we’re rebuilding it, only this time we are not using bricks and mortar, but silicon chips and genetic engineering. 

Hang with me.

We live in a technological age, and have embraced technological advance with abandon, creating what Neil Postman termed a “technopoly” where technology of every kind is cheerfully granted sovereignty. Or, as Jacques Ellul has written, at least the process of technique designed to serve our ends. 

Ironically, within the word “technology” itself lies the new philosophical mooring that marks our intent. 

The word is built from such Greek words as “technites” (craftsman) and “techne” (art, skill, trade), which speak to the idea of either the person who shapes or molds something, or to the task of shaping and molding itself. 

But it is the Greek word “logos,” to which “technites” is joined, that makes our term “technology” so provocative. 

“Logos” is a reference within Greek thought to divine reason, or the organizing principle of the world. In John’s gospel “logos” was used to communicate to those familiar with the Greek worldview the idea of the divinity of Jesus. 

Moderns have put together two words that the ancients would not have dared to combine, for the joining of the words intimates that mere humans can shape the very order of the world. 

So while technology itself may be neutral in its enterprise, there can be no doubt that within the word itself are the seeds for the presumption that would seek to cast God from His throne and assert humanity in His place as the conduit of divine power. 

And we have wasted little time.

I remember an article reflecting on how on July 25, 2003, the first test-tube baby turned twenty-five. Robert Edwards, who along with his partner, Patrick Steptoe, pioneered the procedure, graced the occasion with a rare but candid interview with The Times of London. 

“It was a fantastic achievement but it was about more than infertility,” said Edwards, then seventy-seven and emeritus professor of human reproduction at Cambridge University. “I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God Himself or whether it was scientists in the laboratory.”

Smiling triumphantly at the reporter, he said,...

“It was us.”

James Emery White

WHAT ARE THE THREE THINGS THAT CREATE A MEANINGFUL LIFE? (this is an interesting post today by Don Miller from Storyline) Click HERE for his blog.

Years ago a psychologist named Viktor Frankl stood up to Sigmund Freud. Freud was teaching what man wanted most in life was pleasure. But Frankl believed man wasn’t seeking pleasure as much as he was seeking a deep sense of meaning.   In fact, he went on to say “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” -Viktor Frankl

I believe Frankl was right, and I think it’s obvious. Everybody around us is seeking pleasure, but pleasure rarely satisfies. In fact, the most contented people I know have found something more satisfying than pleasure, they’ve found a humble sense of gratitude and are actively participating in work that is difficult, beautiful and good.

Viktor Frankl spent most of his life studying the mystery of meaning, and amazingly, he came up with a prescription for how we can experience it ourselves.

His prescription was remarkably simple:

	Have a project you’re working on that requires your unique skills and abilities. And preferably a project that helps others.
	Share your experiences within the context of safe, loving relationships.
	Find a redemptive perspective on your suffering and challenges.

I discovered Viktor Frankl’s work during a dark season. I’d written my first bestseller and yet the experience didn’t satisfy me. I’d wanted to be a bestselling author all my life and I assumed when it happened I’d experience some kind of actualization. It’s an absurd thought, but I think we all have these mystical hopes that if we only had such and such we’d be satisfied.

After reading Frankl’s thoughts, I began to structure my life differently.

I woke up every day and identified a few projects that needed my attention and made a to-do list for each. I realized that if I gave myself enough time to “think about life” I only got depressed, but if I actually started working I was too distracted to get depressed. In other words, I realized we weren’t meant to sit around and stare at our belly buttons. We were supposed to be distracted with a worthy pursuit.

I also began to pay more attention to my relationships. I stopped looking to “join a community” and created one of my own. I walked away from unhealthy relationships and started spending more time with people who were non-judgmental, kind, supportive and loving. This had a terrific effect on my stability and I found myself feeling more contented and confident.

And lastly, I took a reflective look at some of the challenges I’ve faced in life and while acknowledging there was plenty to grieve, I also acknowledged I’d been blessed by some of those hard experiences. By that I mean some of the painful experiences I’d had had made me more humble, more tender. This may have been the most healing exercise of my life and I highly recommend it.

Life looks very different for me now. I don’t wake up wondering what life is about or where I fit. I don’t have unhealthy relationships and I don’t pick at old wounds so they won’t heal.

Viktor Frankl’s prescription works.

Sadly, Frankl passed before he could create a formal process people could go through to analyze and organize these three areas of their lives. But the process was so healing to me I began working on a way to explain it to others and take them through it.
That process became Storyline, and so far we’ve taken about 25k people through it. The feedback has been stellar. We’ve heard from people who’ve told us their marriages have been saved, their depression has subsided and their lives have gone from mundane to adventurous.

•••

Our goal at Storyline has always been to take one-million people through the process, so we’ve got a long way to go. But we’re about to release a tool that will help.
On March 31st, we’ll be releasing Creating Your Life Plan, our online course that allows you to create a life plan based on Viktor Frankl’s prescription to experience meaning.
The course consists of 11 videos in which I sit with author Shauna Niequist in my kitchen and help her create her life plan. As you take the course, you simply fill out your plan along with Shauna and I, watching and listening as we talk about the most joyful and agonizing seasons of our own lives. I was amazed, even as we filmed the E-Course, at how powerful the process was. Lets just say there was a lot of laughing and a lot of crying.
You can take the course by yourself, in a small group or, if you own a company, you can get a corporate license so you’re entire staff can go through it (While Shauna and I talk a little about our own faith, there’s no forceful religious content in the course.)

Nobody is more healthy, productive or clear-headed than a person who has planned and is living a meaningful life.

The course was beautifully shot and very expensive to produce but we’re offering it at a great price. For the entire month of April, it’s actually 33% off.
If you’ve not experienced Storyline but have always wanted to, would you take the course? We believe the more people who are living healthy, meaningful lives there are, the better we will become as a culture. Culture really can heal from the inside out, and we think planning and living a meaningful life is a step toward making that happen.
It’s been more than a year since we’ve released anything new at Storyline so if you don’t mind, would you spread the word? Will you make Creating Your Life Plan your next small group experience? Will you take all your employees through it? Your family? Yourself?

We think your story is worth it.

Don Miller