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…is probably not what you expect him to look like. Some of the more obnoxious misconceptions look like this:

“Week after week, Mooneyham uses the gospel to punch back against what he perceives to be a rising tide of emasculation,” the article reads. “He’s delivered a series of Sunday talks called ‘Grow a Pair’ and ‘Band of Brothers,’ and the church offers male leadership courses with titles like ‘Spartan’ and ‘Fight Club.’ He’s performed baptisms at Ignite-sponsored tailgate parties and instructed married couples to go home and have sex every day for a week. And there’s rarely a Sunday where Mooneyham doesn’t praise a big truck, a big gun or a pair of big balls in the same breath that praises Christ.”

…a conception so silly I don’t think I need to go into theological depth to point out its issues. However, I don’t go as far as some authors to discredit the warrior as a legitimate Christian archetype. The image of the warrior permeates scripture, and I believe for good reason. That being said, we must properly answer, “Who or what are we fighting?” Scripture gives some guidance:

¹² For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Our true enemies are not people. They are, at very worst, servants of a darker power, and never beyond the redeeming power of God. We are fighting the power of Satan himself. And while I believe we are most definitely supposed to bring the fight to the external machinations of Satan and people or nations who would harm innocents, like I have said before I believe the internal battle is also of utmost importance and more often ignored. In that vein, I believe the masculine Christian is not a man who whoops and yells about balls of steel and guns. Rather, he is the man who brings the utmost violence upon Satan, in forgiveness, in hope, in love. He is the man who proclaims the Gospel, trusting his fears of rejection and ridicule to God, turning to peace and patience for counsel. That does not mean he cannot speak forcefully. Jesus had some choice words for the Pharisees and for Herod (“Go tell that fox [Herod]…”) . But we must measure our words carefully, ensuring we speak in righteousness rather than out of human pettiness or our own hurt feelings.

Now, even though I do not reject the warrior archetype, I do believe people are right to point out that the warrior is not the completeness of the Christian man. In particular, I like this thought:

And the simple fact is, when God created Adam he didn’t make a warrior; he made a gardener.

Gardening isn’t easy work. It demands great labor and—since the Fall—requires the sweat of our brow. It’s dirty and it’s tiring. It involves careful, perhaps even painful, pruning. Ultimately, it even demands recognizing that your work on its own is not enough. You need the sun to shine. You need the rain to fall. You need God to make something out of your own weak and feeble efforts.

And then I believe the gardener and the warrior imagery are beautifully tied together by the top comment on the article:

I think it’s worth pointing out that ancient Roman infantry were mostly farmers. The essence of masculinity is probably something like Farmer-who-will-be-a-Warrior-when-he-must.

The Christian man is the gardener and the reluctant warrior. Not reluctant in the sense of ‘I’ll never put my heart into fighting.’ No, if we believe we must fight a battle, then we must fight it with all our strength and conviction. But we must be reluctant in that our prime calling is not the battle. We are not made for unending strife. Rather, we are called to toil patiently for the salvation of all mankind, working to bring God’s kingdom to fruition while trusting in God to make our efforts worthwhile, and if there is any violence to be had, it is upon the powers of darkness, not our fellow human beings.

Say, where have I seen this kind of imagery before?

Once again, I have let all three readers of my blog The Slow Hunch down. Instead of providing links here on Difficult Run to new blog posts each time I write one, I’ve let them build up over the past couple months. To add a little salt to the wound, letting them pile up has made realize that I still don’t post all that much despite my supposedly new commitment to do so.

But I digress. Here is yet another recap of my past few posts at The Slow Hunch:

• “The Edinburgh Review, 1854: “All Is ‘Of the Earth, Earthy'”” – Looks at an April 1854 report in The Edinburgh Review examining Mormonism in Utah, which emphasizes the overlap of the sacred and the “earthy” among the Mormons.
• “The Union Review, 1868: “Labour, In Fact, Is Their Religion”” – Relies on another non-Mormon account–this time from a book review in an 1868 volume of The Union Review–that comments on the religious nature of the Utah Mormons’ industriousness.
• “Thomas Carlyle and the “Perennial Nobleness” of Work” – Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle’s “Draft Essay on the Mormons” praised the leadership of Brigham Young (though not by name) and the practical, action-oriented belief system of the Mormons. Carlyle’s well-known “gospel of work” in also briefly examined in various letters and writings. 
• “The Human Economy” – Discusses the shift from an industrial (hired hands) to a knowledge (hired heads) to an eventual human (hired hearts) economy. Managers are beginning to pay attention to the “soft skills” of those they hire.
• “Resolving Conflict” – Features a TEDX talk from author Jim Ferrell of the Arbinger Institute on resolving conflict at home, work, and abroad.

Stop on by.

The state of the earth’s resources and population has been a hot topic for a while now. The most common refrain is that we simply need fewer people. How that goal is accomplished can range from mild like family planning to inhuman like a one-child policy. Yet the unchallenged premise remains that reducing the amount of people is the main way to achieve this goal. I reject this premise. I contend that the main cause of resource crises on earth is how much people use, not how many people there are.

On this note, the BBC ran an article recently on the topic. The most relevant parts in my mind:

The picture is complicated by the fact that while the overall figures have been growing, the world’s per-capita fertility has been declining for several decades.

The impact on the environment has increased substantially, however, because of rising affluence and consumption rates.

….

As a result of this long-term impact, the world should focus on curbing consumption and designing ways to conserve species and ecosystems.

“Society’s efforts towards sustainability would be directed more productively towards reducing our impact as much as possible through technological and social innovation,” says Prof Bradshaw.

The BBC repeats the idea that less people forms part of the equation, and in light of my argument, people will often ask, “Can’t we do both?’ In theory, I agree that responsible resource usage goes hand-in-hand with family planning, but so long as people keep before their minds that they can just prevent people from existing, they develop very little desire to conserve resources. So by compromising we end up right back where we started, staking our future on the dangerous premise that we need to prevent people from existing in order to live life comfortably.

Furthermore, as the BBC mentions, even a catastrophic decline in population will do very little to arrest any resource problems so long as resource consumption remains the same as now or increases, without even considering the effect of extreme population decline on other areas such as economics and culture. Overall, I see a picture of resource management centered around population control that will at best be ineffective, at worst outright immoral, and very likely detrimental to society in the long run.

I also believe we are meant to be fruitful and multiply. I believe human life is inherently good. We can live with an increasing number of people on earth. What we cannot live with is a world where people use vastly more than they need. People will often point out how the development of China and India is putting strain on the world’s resources and how they need to use less, but if Americans continue to live well in excess of what we need, on what grounds can we possibly tell the rest of the world to use less? We must be the change we want to see, especially when we’re 4% of the world population and use 20% of the world’s resources.

I realize my vision is a bit pie-in-sky. However, I think more evidence is mounting that all the family planning in the world and even outright authoritarian population control will do nothing if we do not reduce our desire for objects. Then on the flip side, I believe if we do learn to desire less, more people will not create crises. A family of four wanting to live a luxurious American lifestyle will place more demand on resources than a family of eight living modestly.

Therefore, I believe we have two choices set before us. We can sacrifice objects, or we can sacrifice people. Which do we choose?

Today marks the 74th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto. Warsaw had been home to vibrant Jewish culture, religious and secular. Before the war’s outbreak, 30 percent of the population was Jewish. The ghetto was set up in order to better control and contain the Jewish population before deporting it to death camps.

I have a personal interest in the Warsaw Ghetto. As far as we know, all of my Dad’s side of the family that remained in Europe perished in the Holocaust. That, however, was much further south, in Bukovina. My interest in the Warsaw Ghetto comes from a couple of different things. As a child, I had some wooden trains made by a survivour of the ghetto who lived on a kibbutz where my Mom had volunteered in the 70s. Then, in high school, I participated in a program where a mixed group of Jewish and Arab youth engaged in dialogue about current politics, while learning about the Holocaust in a museum that emphasized two aspects- children’s life, and armed resistance. At the end of it, we were certified as guides in the museum. Due to transport issues I was never able to fully take advantage of the opportunity, but the interest in the Warsaw Ghetto has remained with me.

Here are the stories of three individuals from the Warsaw Ghetto. All three were killed, but each one tells us something a little different about what the Nazis tried to, but could never destroy.

Janusz Korczak.

Janusz Korchak was a pioneering pedagogue, children’s author, and orphanage director. Because of his professional fame, Korczak had the chance to save himself, but refused to abandon the children of his orphanage.

Mordechai Anielewicz.

Mordechai Anielewicz formed an armed resistance group in the ghetto. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came as a nasty shock to the Germans, convinced as they were that the Jews were broken and defeated. The liquidation of the ghetto that should have taken three days, took instead a month, and the uprising inspired further resistance.

Hillel Zeitlin.

Hillel Zeitlin was born into a religious Jewish family, but abandoned religion in his youth before undergoing powerful spiritual and mystical experiences that caused him to regain his faith. He died at age 71 proudly wearing in a prayer shawl, and carrying a volume of the Zohar, the preeminent work of Jewish mysticism.

Grim Sunday reading, I know, yet these three things are beautiful beyond words. To love others when you must pay the ultimate price for it, to refuse to remain passive while people being murdered or wronged, and to devote oneself to God even in the depths of despair, that is kind of what Sunday is all about.

I watched Robert Redford’s film A River Runs Through It for the first time last week. The film was absolutely gorgeous to look at, though admittedly dull. However, the narration from portions of the original novella left me a lot to chew on and I ended up reading the story over the course of the following week. While there are many beautiful elements of the story, for my purposes, I couldn’t help but notice the underlying concept of the sacred in the mundane. Crafts and tasks, whether for hobbies or work, can be transformed into an art. And grace can be manifested through art.

This is the topic of my latest post at The Slow Hunch. Check it out.

I said a while back that I would link to my posts at The Slow Hunch given its slightly new direction. But for whatever reason, I’ve totally forgotten to link to the past several posts.

So, instead of blowing up DR with multiple posts simply linking to another blog, I’ll provide the links below with a brief description of the post. That way, all 3 readers of my blog can catch up if they’ve fallen behind:

• “The Church of Starbucks” — Churches tend to teach things pertaining to character and self-control. Similarly, Starbucks’ business model focuses on developing its employees’ willpower by providing proper training and autonomy. Drawn largely from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and featuring a brief video presentation by the same author.
• “Freedom to Flourish” — The Institute of Faith, Work, and Economics is think tank that researches the intersection of the three subjects in its name. For July 4, I posted their excellent and, for me, moving video titled “Freedom to Flourish.” As the video’s narrator begins, “Our lives are not divided into two halves with one part being sacred and another part secular. Worship is not reserved only for Sunday morning, but for Monday morning as well.”
• “Do What You Love” — Using an article in the leftist magazine Jacobin as a springboard, I talk about how the work mantra “do what you love” robs individuals of the potential to make their labors meaningful and to experience “worship through corporeality”: the sacred in the mundane. Plus, I contrast Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech with that of David Foster Wallace.
• “Don Bradley & the Sanctification of Progress” — Mormon historian Don Bradley presented a paper at the 2014 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association titled “Mormonism: The Sanctification of Human Progress.” The full video is provided in the post along with some of my favorite quotations from it. It has a lot of overlap with my own paper (written and presented by fellow DR blogger Allen Hansen) on worship through corporeality.
• “Alain de Botton on Work” — Author Alain de Botton has a book written about everyday work (one I haven’t read yet). The brief post features a clip of de Botton discussing work and its connection to the human quest for meaning.
• “Meeting Core Needs” — A NYT piece discussed the benefits of meeting employees’ four core needs: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Ways of meeting them included consistent physical renewal, the feeling of being valued, the chance to focus on one task at a time, and a sense of purpose. Research like this helps remind us that corporations are in fact people and should therefore be managed as such.
• “Management Lessons from Dr. Who: Robert Sutton Edition” — Season 8 of the Doctor Who reboot began this August, starring Peter Capaldi as the new face of the Doctor. In this post, I weave together management insights from Stanford’s Robert Sutton with the outlook of Capaldi’s Doctor in the season premiere “Deep Breath.” Managers/leaders can’t just take a top-down, big picture stance. They must embrace a bottom-up, detail-oriented approach as well.

And there you have it.

Fellow DR editor Allen Hansen presented a paper we wrote together at the 2014 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association this April. Its title is “Worship Through Corporeality: Mormonism, Hasidism, and Management.” In it we look the Hasidic concept of “worship through corporeality” through the lens of Judaism, Mormonism, and business management. I have the video, paper summary, and additional information posted at The Slow Hunch.

Check it out.