Why We Believe Our Political Opponents Hate Us

I have learned something about the United States of America in the past month or so.

We believe that we hate each other, and that is a major problem.

I would like to say that I am not sure where this idea came from, but I’m pretty confident I know. We are constantly fed the line that the right wing hates women or the left wing hates Christians. We are told that Republicans don’t care about anyone unless you happen to be a fetus while simultaneously being told that Democrats don’t care about any of your rights and want to become the thought police.

We’ve all heard these kinds of things. I didn’t provide you links, but you know it’s true. And you also know that it does not feel good when you think that someone hates you. For those of us who happen to be on the right, we get pretty defensive when people say that we hate women because that isn’t true almost all the time (there are probably a few horrible people who do legitimately hate women on the right). For those of you on the left, I’m pretty confident that most of you don’t hate Christians either, so it is probably quite easy for you to become defensive when this charge is brought against you (although, again, I’m sure that there are a few on the left who legitimately do hate Christians).

However, that’s the problem. Most of us are not these stereotypes. Yes, I am a pro-life man and oppose abortion. Yes, I do not hate women. I just happen to think that the unborn child is deserving of protection just like any other individual life. That does not mean I hate women by any means.

Here’s the fascinating thing though. I do not believe I hate women, but you might think I do because I do not support the right to an abortion. Therefore, by your definition, I must hate women, but by my definition, I do not hate women because I don’t feel any type of active animus towards half of our population.

We are enamored with this idea that if someone does not agree with us, they must hate us. It is really a case of verbal imprecision. You can think that I am a terrible person for not supporting a woman’s right to choose. You can think that I am wrong in my conclusions regarding the personhood of the unborn child. You can think that I am old-fashioned and not in touch with 21st-century morality. You can say that my policy position contributes to the oppression of women. You can think all of that, and I am okay with that. Those are legitimate claims that you can make about my position. I think they are all false, but at least they are claims that address my argument.

Making a conclusion about my internal feelings about other people seems to be impossible. Hatred is one of my emotions. I decide to hate someone else (and, as a Christian, I should never make that decision). Nevertheless, hatred is something that comes from me and is applied to something else by me. I am the only one who’s really in a position to know if I hate something unless of course I tell you that I hate something. In that case, you will know that I hate something, but the only way that you know is if I tell you.

As a result, it really irritates me when I hear political arguments that come from people claiming to be inside my mind or claiming to have the ability to speak for me. It simply is not possible, and it is an imprecision of language at best and a malicious attempt at behavioral modification at worst.

I mentioned above that we tend to get defensive when people say that we hate them. We immediately recoil and say that we don’t hate women, Christians or anyone else. Our guard goes right up. I just did it in the past few paragraphs after all.

There is big money to be made on people who are defensive and outraged when they are being attacked in what seems to be an unfair manner. It is really nice to be able to turn on TV and hear that just because somebody says that I must hate women because I oppose abortion doesn’t mean I actually hate women. It is reassuring to hear the talking heads on TV tell me that I am not the only one that opposes abortion and doesn’t hate women.

That being said, how do they keep me turning on the TV and needing that reinforcement? After all, that is their business model. They need my eyes on their channel to generate advertising revenue to keep the lights on. To pay their bills, they need me coming back for more. They need me coming back to reinforce that I’m not crazy. They want to be there for me and provide that reassurance.

The problem is that I do not need that reassurance every day. On a normal day, I go to work in my office, and none of my coworkers tell me I hate women because I oppose abortion. I have yet to tell any of my coworkers that they hate me because I know they are on the left and I am a Christian. Therefore, they must hate me because that is what people on the left do. Those kinds of things don’t happen every day to me. In fact, I find that even when discussing sensitive topics with people who actually know me, there is some sense of goodwill. We may not agree, but we are at least civil and genuine.

That doesn’t serve the needs of the TV channels or the Internet media outlets though. I come home from work, and I don’t feel like people hate me. In fact, I feel like they may actually be my friends despite our differences as hard as that may be to believe. I don’t really need that reinforcement then to remind me that I’m not crazy because I don’t feel crazy. I don’t need them to build me up and make me feel better that there are lots of people who think like I do because it really doesn’t bother me that much. No one seems to hate me in my everyday life based on my policy positions even though I know tons of people who will disagree with me (I tend to lean more conservative in general, although not exclusively, and live in Vermont after all).

Therefore, what do these media outlets need to do? They need to remind me that people hate me. If I’m not getting that constant perception of hatred in my everyday life, I’m not going to buy into the arguments they push unless they are able to convince me that the other side genuinely hates me. Otherwise, what do I care about their political commentary? They talk about all of these crazy people on the left who must hate Christians, but I have run into very few of those in my time in real life. They don’t really seem to concern me.

These outlets then need to convince me that these people actually do hate me and that it actually matters to me. Therefore, they don’t just talk about people who hold these positions that we disagree with. They make it feel like that guy could be my neighbor. There may be one person in the world who holds a particular opinion, but they have to make it sound like that person is a threat to me. I have to believe that that insane level of hatred is going to hit me tomorrow. Then, I start to get nervous, so I need to be reinforced in my beliefs. Then I go back to the talking heads and commentary to make myself feel better that I am not the only one who feels the way I do.

You can see the cycle at play. It is a cycle of outrage. In my everyday life, I really did not find all that much to be outraged about unless someone tells me that I need to be outraged. There are times when I do come across things that are insanely problematic. There are times where I could be an eyewitness to an act of racism for example, and I realize that there are people who hold incredibly sick ideas in our society. I see these things happen, and I respond to them in my own life. However, in general, things that outrage me don’t happen on ideally basis. In general, most people are pretty decent, and even though we disagree, most of us have the ability to get along.

Maybe I’m just really lucky and I am in a situation where my life goes this way. Maybe you are going to use this as evidence of my privilege and therefore discount everything I say as evidence of further white, male privilege. Maybe I need to be more sensitive to realize everything that is wrong with the world around me and get outraged more on my own accord. Maybe if I just opened my eyes more, I would see why everyone gets so angry all the time about everything and see injustice everywhere.

I don’t think I am naïve though. I realize there is a great deal of injustice in our society, and I realize there are tons of things that are not perfect. Then fact, there are plenty of things that are downright bad. We can make a list if you want to, but I don’t think I am looking at the world with unnecessarily rose-colored glasses. Rather, I tend to think that I have a rather realistic view of the world.

There are plenty of things that are wrong and deserve outrage. I’m fine with that. However, I also do not believe that every interaction I have is somehow hiding some type of secret agenda. I refuse to buy into the myth that entire groups of people, with sometimes millions of members, magically fit into a particular mold that all hate me. In addition, I refuse to cave in and allow someone else to define my own emotions about them. I am the one who knows how I feel towards people or groups, and I can tell you if I hate them or not. If I say that I do not hate them, then I’m really the only one who is in the position to know that.

I don’t know about you, but it seems rather obvious to me. We are intentionally manipulated to believe that the other side hates us. It keeps the outrage machine spinning, and it gives us a common enemy to unite against. It is interesting that when you watch let’s say Fox News or MSNBC, they never tell you to go out and hate Democrats or Republicans respectively. Instead, they tell you that Democrats or Republicans hate you. You see how that works. You still get to hold onto your belief that you don’t hate people, which is most likely true if you are a decent person. However, you get outraged over the fact that other people unjustifiably hate you. That’s all it takes to keep the cycle going.

I am writing this article, admittedly, exhibiting a degree of frustration with the way the world is, but I think that implicit in this argument is a way to make it better.

You must talk to real people. When you go to work, think about what the people around you actually believe. Odds are they don’t hate you and you don’t hate them despite the fact that you very well might be at opposite ends of the political spectrum. When you go to the grocery store, you very well might not agree with the person running the cash register, but that doesn’t really impact anything about your transaction.

I’m convinced that, at the end of the day, the problem is not really that most Americans hate someone else. I think a larger part of the problem is that most Americans are convinced that someone else hates them. Let’s do what we can to break that habit.

On Writing a Research Paper

Because I am in the middle of the semester, it is prime time for beginning to work on some research papers. In our PhD program at Faulkner University, every class is finished with a research paper. There is a little bit of variation in the length depending on the amount of coursework for the rest of the semester, but it is enough to say that they are pretty lengthy endeavors.

As those of you who have followed this website for a while might remember, I transitioned to writing one long post per week rather than three short posts. I largely made this decision because I wanted to improve my longform writing. I have written many short articles, but getting over 1000 words can be a challenge for me. It is not that I am not capable of it; anybody can write at length. Rather, it has always been a question of quality for me and actually a question of questioning.

As far as quality, I normally have something that I want to write about. Once I discover my main idea, I am ready to run. I want to start getting things down on paper. However, my topics tend to be highly specialized and very specific. For example, my temptation is to suggest that this article will only be about my propensity for writing short articles. That would be true, but it doesn’t make for a very engaging longform article. After all, if I tried to remain with such a specific topic for thousands of words, it would get pretty dry. There is only so much that you need to know about such a highly specific topic.

That is always my first hurdle I have to get over. I want to make sure that I don’t ramble unnecessarily or start trying to draw out a point that does not need to be drawn out. When I am writing about a hyper-specialized topic, it is easy for me to want to just start drawing out I topic and saying more than really needs to be said. You might remember doing that in elementary school. When you had to write something with a word count, you only had so much that you wanted to say, but if you hadn’t quite hit that word limit yet, you just continued rambling to try to get to that point where your paper would be long enough to turn in. I get that temptation. Maybe some of you think I am doing that right now.

Sometimes I have an excellent topic, but if it is too specific, I know that I am going to have to broaden my perspective a little bit more, or I am going to end up in a trap where I have to brutally extend my topic, say too much about too little and therefore decrease the quality of my paper. I learned that lesson early in my high school career, but it is still a temptation now. If I don’t choose my topic well from the beginning, I’m going to run into major difficulties, and quality will be the victim.

That relates to my second point about questioning. It is certainly possible to choose a question that is far too narrow for a 20 page paper. “What is the purpose of life as described by the first page of The Cat in the Hat?” Man, that would be a brutal paper to have to write. At the same time, you can go way too far in the other direction. “What is the purpose of life?” People have written books on that question, and it is still very difficult to answer in that format. To try to find the perfect answer to the purpose of life in just a few thousand words is also a very tall order.

I know this is a ridiculous example, but I think that you can see how the best answer lies somewhere in the middle, and it is a matter of choosing the right question for the project you have at hand. If I am writing a 500 word blog post, I am going to get very specific. I might try to answer the first question if it would even be possible (probably not, but you never know). The only way to actually know the right type of questions to ask is to begin writing and to gain experience.

That was the difficult part for me. I have spent most of my writing career on the Internet talking about sports and more recently religion, politics and culture. Because of my focus in that form of media, I have written with pretty tight word restraints. People have short attention spans in general, and their attention spans are even shorter online. As a result, I had a lot of practice writing short things. I had a lot of practice choosing one, highly specific point, hitting that point on the head and moving on.

I didn’t have much experience putting down 30 pages on very much of anything, so I needed to get my eyes off of the types of questions I had been asking previously. I couldn’t just get by with one very specific question. Of course, there had to be a great deal of focus, but it needed to be a question that I was able to explore in a variety of different ways. Rather than say that J. R. R. Tolkien demonstrates a monotheistic universe through the opening scene in The Silmarillion, it would be more appropriate for me to explore how Tolkien demonstrated a monotheistic universe in The Silmarillion as a whole or even the entire canon of his work depending on the length of the paper I had to write.

That is the portion that I am still trying to learn and am still developing. I think that is the secret to all effective research. We need to learn to learn how to ask the right question for the job at hand. If you start with the wrong question, then the entire project is going to go off the rails.

It can develop into a problem of quality as I suggested before because I may try to do too much with too little content. However, it may just be a bad question to ask all the way around. If I start with a question that has no answer or an uninteresting answer, that’s not really going to be a very successful paper either. It is again the question of questioning. Even if I resist my temptation to try to stretch a bad question by decreasing the quality of my response, it may not even have to extend that far. Even if my question is perfect in terms of scope and allows me to answer the question with just the right word count, some questions just don’t have very interesting answers.

I know that some people may say that there are no bad questions. That’s entirely false. There are plenty of bad questions. From a cost-benefit analysis, if you are writing a research paper and spending lots of time on it, the very least you can do to maximize your benefit out of the rather substantial cost it takes to produce a paper of a decent length. If you’re going to spend all of that time on a paper, you might as well have said something worth saying.

Consequently, I hope this helps to a little bit as you think about research papers that you may be writing. It is, of course, a challenge to get the things done. Getting the first draft on paper may take several hours, but you will probably spend at least as long, if not more time, in the revision process. I find that I rarely entirely overhaul my paper. I have made it to a complete first draft, then I normally don’t start from scratch again. That being said, the finished product is probably going to look different than what you began with. As an interesting side note, in a recent paper I just drafted, I am seriously considering major structural changes and rearrangement. I like the parts of it, but I may want to put them in a different order. I’m really not sure. I guess we will see how I feel in the coming weeks. I have a while before it has to be turned in.

If you want my advice, and perhaps you do since you clicked on this link, I guess I would say that the best thing you can do for yourself before you write a research paper is find something you actually enjoy talking about, writing about and thinking about. That will address my two major concerns from above. First, you will have enough interest in the topic to keep your quality high. You will be willing to read more, learn more and question more. Because of the increased level of questioning, you will then be able to figure out the best question you can ask for your assignment. If you need a broad question for a long paper or a specific question for a short paper, you will have the excitement you need to get this job done. I tend to be a rather practical person, so that is naturally my target. The job has to get done. You don’t want that paper to be halfway done. Find something you are excited about, or it is going to be a rough process for you.

The Myth of Progress

Innovation is a funny thing. We are conditioned to believe that anything that is new must also be improved. I don’t believe it is any coincidence that marketing departments have realized that this verbal pairing sells. Why does it sell? It sells because we believe in progress marching on. We have an entire political party that has built their brand on being progressive because of the power of this assumption. They want to be known as progressive because they believe that they are making progress toward something better. That is of course the assumption inherent in the term progress. It is movement towards an ideal, but it is a good thing. Nobody wants to call themselves the regressive party after all because we have associated progress with something that is desirable.

I am here to tell you that much of what you know about progress is wrong. You have been fed what marketing companies want you to believe. They believe in the inevitable connection of new and improved New can certainly be improved, this is not a necessary connection. Consequently, you will soon see that progress is actually not always a good thing. There are times when progress is in fact detrimental and destructive.

First, let’s deal progress being good. This should make sense to most of us. There are times where we are in a bad situation, and we want to make progress towards a better situation. Consider modern medicine. There are so many terrible diseases that we can handle simply today but were lethal just a century ago. It is progress that we are able to help people survive. That should go without saying, and I don’t know very many people that would argue that that kind of progress is a bad thing. It is clear that progress can be good.

Also, think about American attitudes towards slavery. In 1800, slavery was considered socially acceptable by a large portion of our population. Now, it is a vast minority that are so horrendously racist. I’m not saying the problem is solved, but I think we would agree that this is a form of progress. Society’s attitude has moved in the right direction towards an ideal where racism does not exist anymore. We are far from that, but it is hard to deny that there has been progress, and it is hard to deny that that progress has been anything but good.

These types of examples probably resonate quite clearly. There are things that are bad. We desire to move towards that which is perfect. Therefore, when we move away from that which is bad towards that which is perfect, we are making progress. Maybe it hasn’t gone far enough yet, or maybe there is a lot left to do, but it is clear that progress in many situations can be a very good thing.

Therefore, I am obviously not of the belief that all progress is bad.

However, let me suggest that there is a time where progress needs to stop. There are times where progress is only useful to a certain point. As kind of a ridiculous example, we hear a lot of people talk about our planet being overpopulated. Someone may suggest that we need to not have so many children. This is not a position I advocate for, but you have probably heard these arguments which is why I am using it now.

We can make progress towards that goal, but we need to know when to stop. We need to know when our population has returned to a sustainable level. If we continue progressing towards population reduction forever, then we are going to have no people left eventually. Even for people who would argue for having fewer children, they realize that progress towards their goal of reducing population is only worthwhile up until a certain point when we have the right number.

Or, to use an even more ridiculous example, I am sitting here watching a football game as I am writing this. Each team has the stated objective to move the ball towards one end of the field. They want to make progress towards that objective, and it is good for them to make progress. However, if they kept fighting with each other after the football went over the goal line, I think that we would all say it was kind of crazy. After all, there is a point where they do not need to make any more progress, and even if they continue trying, it is useless and probably even counterproductive. They got the football to the right place, so if they continue to fight to make progress in a given direction, it really is not going to do any good.

Consequently, I hope it is clear that progress can indeed be a very good thing and often times is. However, there can be times when progress is not productive anymore. If you go beyond a certain boundary, being productive actually causes harm. It was intended to do good, but it is possible to go too far. It is almost like the old proverb that reminds us too much of a good thing is a bad thing. That is not absolutely true. However, there are times when it is totally accurate and true.

Therefore, this is the myth of progress. We are told that everything new must also be improved. We are told that innovation is always a good thing. We are told that the things that are old are not as good as the things that are new. It is irresponsible to make blanket statements like this. Progress can actually be a very bad thing particularly if it has already gone too far or if it is about to move too far. Standing still can sometimes keep you in a better position than moving forward ever could.

I am not entirely sure why this myth has been perpetuated for so long. Part of it is certainly marketing. After all, if I want to convince someone to buy into a new worldview, product, way of thinking or really anything else, half of the battle is getting them to believe that what they currently have is insufficient. Why do you need a new car? Your old one just isn’t good enough anymore. It may function perfectly fine as a car, but it is missing out on all of the new and improved features, so you are sold on the perception that you need something bigger and better.

However, I think is also an innate expectation. After all, I began this article with a few situations where progress was clearly good. There has been a lot of progress that benefited the world. Therefore, we see that success and automatically apply it to everything. After all, there are so many things that we want to fix in the world that we assume when there is one technique that works, our best practice should always just be to assume that we need more of it. In this situation, we necessarily need to be progressing towards something no matter what. The current state cannot possibly be good enough. There must be some kind of forward motion to something else.

That is where the entire argument goes off the rails. The myth of progress comes down to the fact that progress itself is not always desirable. If something is already right, there is no need to progress away from it. That seems to make intuitive sense, but we buy into the myth that the way the world is must be old-fashioned or backwards. It can’t be good because it is not new and improved.

Here’s the problem with that though. I can pick up the work of Plato from thousands of years ago and find wisdom that is just as true today as it was the day it was written down. Should I reject Plato just because it is really old? Shouldn’t we have had some progress from Plato?

Partially, yes. After all, there are plenty of things in The Republic that are wrong. I am not really a fan of creating a national myth that explains why some people have higher positions in society for example. I would say that is an example of something where we should be moving closer towards an ideal about how we treat other people.

The key difference is that I would suggest we don’t want progress simply for the sake of progress. It is not just that Plato has a particular view and that he showed them a long time ago. We do not necessarily have to move ahead from Plato’s perspective. However, we are free to do so and should do so when there is a problem and we are moving towards a better ideal.

That comes back to what I wrote earlier on slavery. We do not reject slavery simply because it was an old institution, and we are progressing to something different just for the sake of rejecting that which is old. Instead, we reject something that is wrong. We are progressing based on a vision of something better rather than simply a rejection of the way the world is.

I think that is what is missing from a lot of our political discussion today. We aren’t happy with the way the world is, and sometimes that is certainly justified. However, we say that we want to move somewhere different just for the sake of moving where we are. That is the entirely wrong approach to take towards progress. If something is wrong, we move because we want to move to something better. Movement with no direction is what often times get this into trouble. It is like the example I gave above of the football field. That football team can move in any direction it chooses, but there is only one direction that is beneficial. They need to make progress towards that goal. If they move in the wrong direction or if they continue fighting beyond the end zone thus going way beyond where they should, this kind of progress is not helpful.

That’s the problem with most modern conceptions of progress. People don’t have a principal for moving in the direction that they want to go. They just want to move somewhere, and they don’t think that the current location is ideal. Movement for the sake of movement is not what we are looking for. We are looking for movement towards a consistent principle.

To use my example of medicine again, we can understand motion towards a consistent principle. The target is to eliminate some type of deadly disease, so making progress towards that objective means finding a means of treatment.

However, I can imagine a thought experiment where the situation was really bad. People were dying from a particular disease, and that was not acceptable. Therefore, people recognized that the current situation was not acceptable. People were dying from a disease after all. They realized that something had to change. There are a variety of ways that this could be dealt with. For one thing, you could just kill everyone who had that condition. In that way, the problem would be hypothetically solved. That illness would not be relevant anymore.

I think very few of us would agree that that is the ideal situation. We would be making progress towards something, but it would not be in the right direction. In fact, it is objectively better to live with a disease than to be dead. Therefore, even though the disease is not ideal, it progress towards eliminating the disease by means of killing everyone with it is actually worse than simply staying in the current state.

I hope you understand that I am not anti-progress. I am all in favor of moving towards that which is good. However, I refuse to buy the myth that new must be married to improved. New things are not always better. Some of them are, and we should be grateful for that. There are plenty of changes that have made the world a better place. However, we cannot assume that progress is always better. There are plenty of ways to progress towards bad things. It is important for us to discern which is which.

Why We Need The Lord of the Rings Now

Happy belated Hobbit Day! In commemoration of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins’ shared birthday of September 22, Middle-earth lovers from our own world celebrate this most wonderful day. I have told this story before on this website, but I was introduced to The Hobbit in fourth grade. After falling in love with that story, I was handed The Lord of the Rings, and I devoured those immediately as well.

I want to revisit them yet again today with you because these stories are incredibly important for our time. Do you ever feel hopeless with the state of the world? Do you ever feel that things are going so wrong that you might as well just surrender? The darkness seems so impenetrable that we have no chance of making a difference much less making a positive difference.

I think that we often feel that way at times. Some of you may feel that way because of our current political climate (and interestingly, I have heard that same sentiment from both sides of the aisle). Some of you may feel this way because of your social situation. Your family, which ought to be one of the most loving societal institutions, might tragically be a cause of great darkness. It could be just about anything really, but when you find yourself in this place of darkness, there is extreme pressure to lose hope. I don’t know where you have been, but I have a feeling that you can probably identify with this type of feeling.

At least for me, when I open The Lord of the Rings, the feelings that the characters have resonate with me. They experience a very difficult time. They find themselves fighting a battle that they have no chance of winning. Their entire hope is not based on actually defeating Sauron on the field of battle. They realize they can’t really do that. The numbers just don’t add up in their favor, and even with the assistance of many great heroes, any type of face-to-face combat seems futile.

Even after a most triumphant victory on the fields outside of Minas Tirith where the armies of Gondor and Rohan overcame tremendous odds, Gandalf advises that any type of march on the Black Gate is not going to do very much. “I said victory could not be achieved by arms. I still hope for victory, but not by arms. For into the midst of all these policies comes the Ring of Power, the foundation of Barad-dûr, and the hope of Sauron.”[1]

The only way that they have any type of hope to defeat evil is by sneaking past it. Gandalf explains, “His Eye is now straining towards us, blind almost to all else that is moving. So we must keep it. Therein lies all our hope.”[2] Rather than the epic collision that we would expect on the field of battle where the forces of good finally put an end to the barbarian hordes, the most significant battle at the Black Gate turns out to be nothing more than a diversion to bring about the deliverance of actual hope. Frodo needs to destroy the Ring to bring any type of hope. The result of the battle is probably going to be unfavorable, but that is largely irrelevant.

Despite the fact that there was no realistic hope to win the battle at the Gate, everyone understood that they had to nevertheless charge into that darkness. They had to continue to fight and resist hopelessness despite overwhelming odds because they were just one piece in a larger puzzle. They were one moving part, and they had to do their jobs so that the entire machine would function effectively. Gandalf explains the entire purpose of the battle this way. “We must walk open-eyed into that trap, with courage, but small hope for ourselves. For, my lords, it may well prove that we ourselves shall perish utterly in a black battle far from the living lands; so that even if Barad-dûr be thrown down, we shall not live to see a new age. But this, I deem, is our duty.”[3]

Consider it this way. The ultimate mission for all of the free people of Middle-earth is to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. Frodo could not complete that mission by himself. There would have been extraordinarily limited hope if that was all that the mission entailed. However, that was not the only thing that was happening at the time. Rather, there were operations going on that would assist Frodo in the completion of that mission. Therefore, because of their commitment to the mission, even though marching on the Black Gate seemed like a rather suicidal mission, the soldiers marched. Despite their own hopelessness, they were contributing to what was actually the true hope of Middle-earth. The fight was to return Middle-earth to the ordinary as I recently argued in the fall issue of An Unexpected Journal.

We need to consider that in our own world then. Our current situation may seem hopeless, and it may be really tempting to throw in the towel. We may seem to be trying our best, giving it everything we have, and despite all of that effort, it just isn’t working out. We wonder then why it is worth continuing. We can’t help but think that everything is so bad anyway that if we stop trying, it really won’t make much of a difference.

However, we never know what impact our efforts are going to have on the larger mission. It is tempting to look at humanity as tons of people isolated with no sense of unity. However, that’s not how it really is. The hope comes from a cooperative effort of many people who do what it takes to overthrow the evil that they find themselves surrounded by.

You may say that all of this is fantasy. Really, you might like the sound of everything I have said so far. It sounds awesome to have a group of people that are willing to dive into the unknown and fight for the greater good. Even if there is no hope for their own survival, there is a higher calling and a reason to continue fighting.

That being said, you might wonder why we don't seem to see this kind of thing happening in our own world. It works in Middle-earth, but it doesn't work here. It doesn't seem like all of our own fighting against the darkness is making the type of difference that brings about the happy ending we see in The Lord of the Rings.

What strikes me as fascinating nevertheless is something that you cannot overlook. It is what makes these stories so important for our world today, and it is what I believe accounts for their popularity. Something about these stories echoes inside of us and inspires us. Yes, all of these events are taking place in a universe that is not quite the same as ours, but it feels like ours. The people act like we do. Even the languages feel authentic.

Therefore, because it feels like our world and we witness things happening in that world that seem like ours the entire way through, we want to have that hope in this world as well. We want to know that when we charge into a hopeless scenario, there is a higher purpose to continue trying to do the right thing. We want to know that even if our efforts ultimately fail, by doing that, we have still made a move in the right direction. We have perhaps helped someone else succeed or have perhaps helped make the world a better place even if we can't see the fruit of that endeavor at the time. Our courage and effort are serving a greater purpose.

Tolkien realized this. He knew that people wanted this type of resolution, and in his essay, "On Fairy Stories," he reminds us that this kind of story happened in our own world as well. We don't have to limit it only to these secondary worlds that people like Tolkien created. "The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits."[4]

Why then would I suggest that The Lord of the Rings is so important for a world that is devoid of hope? Why is it important for us to read stories like this? It is important because it reminds us of something about our own world. It likes this fire inside of each one of us that there is something higher. It reminds us that our lives are not only our own business.

Before you suggest that I am only proposing that Christianity is nothing more that wish fulfillment, nothing could be further from the truth. All I am suggesting is that there is a human desire for hope. I don't think anyone will deny that. If that hope exists, we can attempt to find it in a variety of different ways. We might believe that our government can provide it. We might decide that our family can provide it. Again, I don't think this is controversial. Everyone puts their hope somewhere unless they are a pure and intellectually consistent nihilist, and I really don't know that I have ever met one of them.

If all of these efforts are insufficient, then these books are an inspiration to continue looking for that hope. That's why they are so important. I don't want people to descend into hopelessness. Rather, I want them to remember that there is hope, and they need to try and find it. As a Christian, I believe that when they really get down to the bottom of it, they are going to find that God's story is not only true but also fills that need. It will serve the dual purpose. Therefore, I am not suggesting that we just plug in Christianity because it is convenient. I suggest it is true, and it has the dual benefit of providing hope as well.

If it is a good thing that people fight for that which is good even against terrible odds and perhaps personal cost, they need to have that hope, and if reading The Lord of the Rings gets people back in touch with that pursuit of hope, then I think that is a good thing. That is why we need these books today.

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), 878, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid., 880.

[3] Ibid.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” http://www.brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf, 23.

On Humility and Going to a Robin Mark Concert

I went to a Robin Mark concert on September 7 in North Haverhill, New Hampshire. For those of you who don’t know, Robin is a Christian songwriter and worship leader from Northern Ireland who put out his first studio album in 1990. He has been doing this for a long time, and while you may not know his name, you very well might know some of his biggest hits including “Days of Elijah,” “Shout to the North, or “Revival.” In fact, his album Revival in Belfast which came out in 1999 enjoyed a remarkable deal of success for good reason. It is an excellent album and well worth listening to if you haven’t before.

We were in a pretty intimate venue with I would say somewhere around 100 people in attendance (although I am remarkably bad at estimating things, so if anyone ever tells you I am way off, probably believe them). Robin obviously led the performance, and he had a very talented backup band comprised of people from the area. Despite the fact that I assume they had very little time for the band and Robin to rehearse together, it was an excellent performance musically.

As I was sitting there, I was reflecting on humility.

Robin himself has had a great deal of success for a long time. He has played plenty of shows larger than this one. Not many people with an international reputation would come to a small town in the middle of New Hampshire to play in a local Methodist Church.

A lot of musicians would never dream of getting on stage with people they had never practiced with before. Even with the magic of technology, it is entirely different to play with someone in person than it is to listen to a recording or anything like that. This band and backup vocalists were very good, but that is certainly a risk on his part. It is not hard to imagine a possible situation where he is stuck with a subpar supporting cast.

However, the pastor of the church, in his introduction, explained how this concert came to be. He had met Robin and thought that it would be a great idea to bring him to North Haverhill, New Hampshire. If it were me, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to ask. After all, it didn’t seem like the type of thing that would normally happen.

Robin’s response struck me. “I go where I am invited.”

It took a while to make this concert happen because of visa issues as the pastor related, but it happened eventually because of that original invitation and the willingness of someone to come and do a show where people sincerely wanted to have him.

How often does this kind of thing happen? How many people have the humility to go places and let people like me have a great experience despite the fact that it may not be full of glitz and glamour?

The answer? Not many in my experience.

It was a lesson for me, and I think it probably applies to you as well. We get wrapped up in what we think we deserve. That feeling of deserving is typically based on our prior experience.

The problem is that when we think about what we believe we deserve, we may miss out on plenty of great opportunities to serve other people. That’s what I feel happened with this particular concert. It was a great night for those of us who were there, and it gave us a good time. There are musicians out there who would never dream of doing this. We were served, and that is what I call humility.

This kind of a funny thing though because, at least for me, humility can be difficult. I kind of relate it to my work in insurance. There are some accounts that aren’t going to make me very much money and take a lot of work. They’re the ones that don’t really look attractive on the surface, but in order to create an experience for the agent, I have to serve them. Even though, like everyone else, I get excited when I hit the big accounts, I can’t just shut down and only say I am going to work on large accounts. If I did that, my agents would know that I am not in it for serving them. They would know I am in it only to help them when I want to. My service would appear to be dependent on what they do rather than simply on the fact that they are customers. They probably would not appreciate that very much.

They seem happier when I serve them and attempt to act with humility even on those days when I don’t really want to make five revisions on a $250 account. After all, it is a lot of work for very little money for the company. It may not really be the best use of my time in terms of a cost/benefit analysis. Nevertheless, I have to humble myself and help them. My job is to take care of my agents at the end of the day. I’m not perfect at that by any means (and maybe my agents will disagree and call me out on this if they ever read this), but I really do try my best. Humility is hard work.

However, it goes a step further than that at least in my business because attitude also makes a difference. We can do the right thing and do the small stuff, but if we do it with the wrong attitude, we can also ruin the experience. I can provide the service technically, but humility is more than just doing it. It is genuinely trying to do your best to get something done for someone else simply because they have value. Again, it is a lot more than just the end result. It is taking care of someone whenever with whatever. You do what you have, and you take care of people.

That really is the way we ought to be in all of our lives as Christians. We should be humble, and we should try to make a positive difference in people’s lives even when there is very little we are going to get back from it. Yes, I do get paid a commission on my small accounts, and I am sure that Robin got paid for coming to do this concert. There is technically some compensation, but I don’t think that’s the point here. It is the spirit of putting on a show that encourages other people even when it may not be in the biggest town or in front of the biggest audience. We try to make a difference wherever we are at, and we do that to try our best to bring glory to God for what we are doing

That is my best effort to communicate what I felt like at the concert the other night. I don’t know Robin personally, but it really seems to me that is the type of guy who is willing to do the small stuff to make a difference for the people who want to enjoy it. I hope that this may be some encouragement to you. It made me smile as I was there the other night.