Do The Next Right Thing: August 2008

Hello, friend,
In this installment I am introducing you to my writing quest. My working title for what will hopefully become a book is THE NEXT RIGHT THING. I am exploring a single, short passage of scripture, 2 Peter 1:5-8 wherein Peter admonishes us to “add” seven qualities to our faith. These qualities are not levels of elitism, nor bragging rights of achievement. They are an array of ever-useful and gracious handholds as we ascend toward maturity in Christ. Continual vigilance to these disciplines and skills will yield a productive and useful (fruitful) life. Like a violinist, or gymnast, a fireman, or a surgeon, the passion for excellence never becomes actual unless it passes through daily, and continuous, exercises. Walking toward maturity in Christ is something for which we should “make every effort.” Because of the faith we have received through the grace expressed in Jesus, these life skills are welcomed as practical and proven means which give us a grip in the slipperiness and murkiness of life. This is just my introduction. I hope it will whet your appetite for more.
Roger

The Next Right Thing (TNRT): Everything Necessary (Intro)

"His divine power has given us everything we need for life..." 2 Peter 1:3

The small airplane was splayed across the mountainside like a hat-pinned moth in a biology display case. Fully intact, and with no visible damage, the Cessna 172 was an eye-catching curiosity for every traveler going Eastbound through the Eisenhower tunnel at Colorado’s continental divide. It sat as an aluminum monument to one of our worst fears: the dangers of mountain flying in a small plane. There it rested, frail and motionless, just above the West portal for all to see, and ponder. Amazingly, the pilot had walked away unhurt, save for his bruised dignity and dented ego, having quite conspicuously undershot the saddle in the Rocky Mountains by several hundred feet.

I asked a pilot friend, with whom I would be flying over these mountains in a few days, what might have gone wrong. There was more than mild curiosity behind my question. My own seat would be skimming these snowcaps soon on my first flight, with him, in his small plane. I needed some assurance of both basic aeronautics and pilot competence. Bob, in his dispassionate, linear analysis, was eager to deconstruct the mishap into its component parts. “The pilot did almost everything wrong. He made a succession of decisions he never should have made, starting with his flight plan, and including his final approach to the mountain pass.” Bob explained that this model of plane was marginal, at best, to safely clear the 14,000 foot Rockies. The engine was normally aspirated, not turbo-charged, and needed ideal conditions to fly at this altitude. More telling, however, was the direction the pilot was apparently flying. With hand motions, Bob explained that because small aircraft behave like cottonwood spores on the unseen currents of air, and because near mountains wind sheer and downdrafts can be severe, the pilot must always allow for very sudden, strong winds. That’s why a wise pilot will always zigzag his way toward a high pass. He will fly almost parallel to the range, approaching the pass at a slight angle. That way, in the event of sudden loss of altitude, he can sheer off toward the valley, circle around, and try again. This pilot was flying directly at the pass, and when the plane was not high enough, or there was a last-minute down-draft, he had no way to correct. There was no margin for error. It was a recipe for death.

“But, I have to give this pilot credit,” said Bob. “His very last decision was exactly right. It was the best of all the choices he had made that day, and a final decision to be admired even by veteran pilots. It took guts and skill. When he saw that he was certain to crash head-on into the mountainside, the pilot, at the last instant, pulled up on the stick, stalling the plane’s forward air speed, which caused it to flutter gently to the ground like a falling leaf on the porch.” When his life was on the line, he did the one right thing he could have done, and he walked away to fly another day, a much wiser pilot.

This pilot performed at his highest level, not to achieve perfection, nor even to reach his intended destination, but just to avoid catastrophic loss. His options were reduced to doing just one next, and only, right thing. When everything, including his life, was on the line, he actually accomplished a considerable victory: he walked away, to pick up the pieces, and resume his life with new wisdom, earned in the crucible of calamity. The searing clarity of having only the least worst thing left as an option, and then applying his acquired knowledge and skill to that maneuver, brought him life-saving safety. And another shot at life!

At first this might sound like a depressingly defensive approach to problems and challenges. But in a dangerous, complex, and fallen world executing The Next Right Thing can literally mean the difference between life and death. Of course, these scenarios of the least worst option are not what we visualized when we set out. We wanted to put our drive in the fairway, but we find ourselves in the unplayable weeds. Then we have to take a penalty, and hit a lay-up instead of reaching the green in regulation. Our score goes from a birdie possibility to a bogie reality, or worse. At times, despite a flash of vision, and applied, prodigious energy toward a goal, an agonizing inch, not the soaring leap, is the only way forward. Wise behavior in extremis often means settling for what seems bad, very bad, at the time, but still recognizes options in the midst of crisis. In the end, it avoids the worst. But, this blunder seems so far short of the success story we had charted, or the scenario of dashing skill and breezy security we had imagined for ourselves.

Worse yet, others may be watching. We’re embarrassed, ashamed to be seen in this mess. A string of over-confident, loudly verbalized goals, promises and choices comes echoing back. Now it’s obvious we’re not going to make it; not on this flight. I am soon going to leave a monument to my presumption, my failure, my inability to wrest success out of the downdraft of the forces against me. But, the next choice, The Next Right Thing, is actually the most courageous thing I can do. We realize, as we lose altitude, and haven’t the power to pull off our flight plan, that the shimmering dream we had, the dazzling vision, can’t be realized today, this instant, or anytime in the foreseeable future. Reality can no longer be avoided. We are staring at a scary, embarrassing, and completely unforeseen crash landing. This very visible failure is not what was promised in our original intentions, the brochures, or the travel plans. But, sometimes, despite our denial and desperate efforts, it is the only choice we have.

We all have a natural desire to succeed by leaps and bounds, by the shortest and most painless path possible. We longed for that blinding insight, the brilliant resolution, the God-delivered certainty. But here we are, confused in the thicket of competing demands, conflicted relationships, and reverberating fears. Our best, our passionate gifting and longing, lies shrouded by a fog of rumbling threats, taunting fears, or urgent trivialities. And, it looks like, though we might well walk away from the scene with our life, our best attempt will appear to others what it actually is: an ignominious, and painfully visible, failure.

I have the frequent, and dubious, opportunity to visit scenarios of such collision and carnage. Kris and Teri’s marriage that began with white prancers and Wolfgang Puck cuisine as bride and groom soared off to a Micronesian honeymoon. But, now they sit in isolated bitterness, un-touching, mere husks surrounding a vacuous emptiness that was once a lustrous and guazy dream. That dream is crumbling, moldering, rusting, because two saboteurs pour daily acid rain onto a once verdant promise. Like a termite-riven, wooden house, the thinnest coat of paint is the sole veneer holding it together. The fiber of a covenant has been eaten away by the craven nibblings of a thousand fault-findings and a zillion put-downs.

Or, there is Scott’s promising, bold, and creative business plan that now lies drowning in a pool of red ink. With brilliant insight he had detected the niche, and had foreseen the market potential. But the economy hit a downdraft, potential customers halted proactive investing, and this beautiful, diaphanous solution is swatted away like a bothersome moth, as fragile and vulnerable as the wisp of thought from which it was created. The dream dies, and along with it, the lien is called, the house foreclosed, and a family is left floundering in breathless panic, its leader a broken arrow.

John and Sarah awaited the birth of their first child with tip-toe eagerness. Every contingency is anticipated. The nursery is state of the art, and festooned with wall art, wallpaper borders of chubby cherubs, glider rocker, baby toys and ablutions for every known body part. A stroller designed like a Mercedes Benz sits in the living room. It transforms itself into more configurations than a rubix cube. Diapers, bibs, outfits, changing table, socks the size of glove fingers, all perfectly color coordinated and monogrammed, await the arrival of this most wanted child. Then, something unforeseen. At 3 AM, during the twenty-seventh week, contractions begin. In the mad, blurry rush to the hospital, all proactive plans are forgotten. The baby is coming, on his own terms, and this gate-crashing entrance will render every decorator color, crib design, and neat baby appurtenance an instant irrelevancy. His lungs aren’t functioning. His heart is weak, and it’s uncertain whether his eyes will ever see the beauty of the colorful preparations made for his coming. A normal, bouncing, and tender infancy has become a medical emergency, stretching into the foggy, seemingly endless, gray future. Everything is on hold. Incubators replace a mother’s arms. Intubation, oxygen, monitors and tubes entangle this three pound patient, and frustrate a father’s desire to touch flesh, the skin of his firstborn. An army of specialists and an encyclopedic data dump overwhelm these fledgling parents, and their innate desire to hold and cuddle a normal infant.

At times like this, prayers for guidance seem to bounce off the ceiling, while well-meant, pious platitudes from Job’s counselors drizzle on our dank discouragement. Confusion mocks our former confidence, and monochrome half-light makes for a featureless landscape. Where is the signal, the breakthrough, the beacon, the landmark? Where is God at such times? What does he want of me? Why wasn’t I warned? Most elementally, how am I going to survive, to breathe my next breath, to pay the mortgage, to salvage my career, or my marriage? How can I know God’s will and seize His strength in my crisis of clarity? Can I still trust Him? Where do I take my broken heart? Where does a savaged soul find a friend, a train-wrecked hope get rescued, a bone-weary mind go to grasp truth? What will people say?

This book is about that kind of experience, that kind of world. This is the arena where the body slam is not some fake, Smackdown ballet. This is the real world, the creation which fell from innocence, and which manufactures complexity, pollution, fear and betrayal with unregulated inventiveness. This is the world where wind is knocked out of me, and no objective information can assure my spasmed diaphragm that I will ever breathe again. It’s the real world, the one every one of us inhabits, and—sooner or later—experiences with blunt force trauma.

In such a context, where we hear tales of twenty-two year old wizards spinning a dorm room inspiration into a billion-dollar bonanza overnight, or where motivational speakers promise surefire success and herculean confidence in five easy steps, and where spiritual mentors slather us with guaranteed victory, it feels utterly pedestrian and defeatist to simply and humbly focus on doing what this book is going to highlight: do The Next Right Thing (TNRT). Don’t shoot for the moon, or for your dreams. Collect the shards of your broken vessel to receive a few drops of sustaining grace. Our exhausted resilience, our stalled creativity, our fruitless theological spinning eventually forces all of us to this anaerobic simplicity. But God, in his counsel, repeatedly comforts and guides toward this trustworthy and available beacon. Don’t get ahead of yourself. In the crisis there is always The Next Right Thing to choose, however desperate it may feel, however incomplete and feathery its substance at the moment.

To resort to the simplicity of choosing The Next Right Thing in a time of confusion, pain, or crisis is not a defeatist concession to perpetual mediocrity, or faithless pragmatism. Nor is this a bumper-sticker solution, chirped in perkiness, with which to torment the troubled. Far from it! Despite how we may have contributed to our own trouble, or strayed from a wise trajectory, we can, at any point, choose to do The Next Right Thing. Failure to perceive this option, and embrace this corrective, is actually the prideful last choice of every fatal crash, unrecoverable financial debacle, and paralyzing personal defeat.

Stated positively and proactively, the ability and practiced life skill to simply do The Next Right Thing, is the very focus that makes a champion. How often we hear in the post-game interview: “We knew if we just concentrated on our game, and executed what we did in practice, we would come out on top.” Champions, whether in sports, or life, do not get ahead of themselves. They do The Next Right Thing (TNRT) in the context they inhabit. They live in reality, in sequence, in the now, moving and flexing in the dynamic tensions of change. Even when the next choice requires a course correction, or snail-like, incremental progress is all that is accomplished, the reiterated and trusting practice of choosing TNRT lays the groundwork for reward, progress, and ultimately, victory.

For my part, I know that there are so many things I don’t know, though I am a teacher, a student of scripture, and a mentor. I don’t know how to counsel a friend out of credit card debt in one simple, spiritual, gymnastic back-flip. I do not know the ultimate purpose God might have for the illness, or the unfairness, you have suffered. I have no watertight guidance system for constructing a roadmap for your career or your calling. I don’t know whom you should marry. I’m not sure if I’ve made the right investments for my own eventual retirement. I don’t know the future. I can’t even master the comprehensive data available to me today! I frequently feel overwhelmed by the mountainous piles of unread, unmastered data that surround every decision. Along with inscrutable fogginess regarding my own future, I vicariously participate in scores of other dilemma-ridden lives.

But I am learning to walk. That is, I am becoming more appreciative and restful with the pace of the ancients. They were pedestrians. Though “pedestrian” is used today as an adjective implying dullness, ordinariness, inanity, and mediocrity, the Bible uses it as a simple verb of faithful movement. We ”walk” with God. We are to “walk” by faith. We are admonished to “walk” in the Spirit. When we live and walk this way we are living moment-by-moment in dependence, relationship, and faith. And--here’s the key—we are progressing one step at a time. At this pace we are practicing instantaneous obedience to wisdom delivered in practical, incremental steps. When we walk in this way and choose TNRT, we demonstrate that we are humble, teachable, alert and available.

It is essential that this habit of TNRT not devolve into a formulaic bromide which replaces the majestic purposes of God, simply to make ourselves more comfortable, our lives more manageable, and our faith better insulated from risk. TNRT is by no means a diversion to keep busy so that we don’t have to think, or feel, deeply. Nor should this approach dumb down a thoughtful strategy toward participation in the mission of God, or miniaturize the majesty of the Most High and the incalculable nobility of serving Him. However, when you or I faithfully choose TNRT, with the emphasis on obeying the next “right” (God-honoring) counsel, are we not then allowing the living Lord Jesus Christ to be “a lamp to my feet” (Ps. 119:105 NIV), and walking with him, at a pace He has prescribed?

TNRT is not an elite, spiritual diet-and-exercise spa for the positive and energetic. It is an essential survival strategy when life body-slams us with crisis. Every one of us will plunge headlong into crises of our own making, and/or crash head-on into catastrophes churned up in a dangerous and fallen world. When the wind is knocked out of us in this crucible of sickness, accident, downsizing, and brute force, what are we to do? At such times we are not asking about the distant future, or parsing the nature of the Godhead. What we need to know at these moments is simply what to do next. What is The Next Right Thing? What is the next step? Is God still working? Is He pleased with me? Will I ever breathe again? Is there still a meaning to my life?

At such times we don’t feel heroic. We feel afraid, overmatched, and bereft of skill. We think in minutes, not months: the next breath, not Pilate’s conditioning. Life gets compressed, and options narrow. It isn’t just pilots strapped into thin-clad aluminum airplanes that experience this. It is all of us. And, the question is: “What do I do in this situation?” When not only my visible body, or measurable livelihood, or treasured marriage is at risk, but also my hopes, dreams and assumptions are crushed, what is left? What good is a faith that doesn’t keep me buoyant and aloft? How can I be a leader, or stay in the game, or sense any fellowship with God and others when a debacle is at my doorstep? When all the work, love, investment, or passion of a decade is put in peril by the next decision, how can I possibly do anything that is right, good, or godly?

Fortunately, our path as Christ-followers is well-trodden by men and women who simply walked, at pedestrian pace, as disciples. Their initial steps of faith became a reiterated march of obedience. This book echoes with the faith journey of such people: Peter, Paul, Abraham, Esther, Ruth, and Priscilla. Sometimes we don’t recognize these Bible heroes as peers, or pedestrians, because we have failed to see how scripture has compressed their lives into a few verses. We are seeing the video highlights, often on fast-forward, but sometimes the documented steps are three years, or forty years, apart. If we slow down to appreciate the sequences, the wide spans of time, and dwell on their real fears and tears, we will begin to recognize their earthy humanity. Then we will learn to imitate their walk, and participate with them in the story of God in this present world. Their peripatetic rovings instantly remind us that life is filled and kept full by retaining and savoring the droplets of guidance, the increments of obedience, the flickers of light which come as they obediently and sequentially chose The Next Right Thing. They walked. Nobody sprinted.

This book is for people like me who are not prescient, omniscient, or even lucid about outcomes. Moments in sequence are doled out to us daily. We notice the clock, but we don’t control time. We don’t know the future, but we have to act today, with inadequate, sometimes conflicting, information. We know a lot, but much of our knowledge seems as relevant as the weather in Bangalore. The pressing question is: “What should I do next?”

Weary warrior, fog-bound slogger, beaten runner, exhausted caregiver, there is more than a last gasp for you. There really is The Next Right Thing to choose. It is right. It is next. It is all God has given for now. That means it is good, and useful. It will keep you alive, hungry for more life, and intently teachable. This way of living is the opposite of complacency and nonchalance. This is life lived with the intensity of the apostles: storming heaven with prayer, savoring every delicious breath in the realization that it could be the last, and seeing God’s fingerprints in everything from the provision of daily bread to the prophecies of history’s climax. This is the way to live, because it is everything God deems to be necessary.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Intro

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

DNRT

Followers