Someone posted over at bigthink.com some praise for an essay from someone designated as "one of Ivy's most celebrated" professors, Clayton Christensen. The essay was on selflessness and humility. At first glance it sounded pretty good to me except some things seemed just a bit off kilter ... that the more I read the more it became evident why: It was Sunday School taught from the academic perspective, and I was used to studying those topics from a religious perspective.
That's a good thing that Sunday School was taught at Harvard, even if it was just an introduction. As an intro it was a pretty good I thought considering the audience ... less than perfect if the audience was perhaps more embracing of the religious roots that the concept of humility came from. The concept of humility as the essay described it was changed in fact from the religious concept, for whatever reasons I'm not sure, but I suspect it was to avoid suspicion that the principle of humility has it's origins in religion, which it does.
Still it was Sunday School, part 1, which is a good thing for a bunch of people that probably think they wouldn't like to go to sunday school. It seemed some ideas were conveyed, even developed from a academic approach. As such the concepts were bound to be inferior, not just from a religious standpoint, but also from an intellectual / logical standpoint, when compared with those ideas as they are or should be taught in Sunday School. I mean, after-all, they are religious principles, not academic ones, no matter how you slice them.
Now I suspect that some would argue with my contention was that this was sunday school at all, academic style or otherwise, that these topics are common in business ethics, etc. Not that I'm aware of. Ethics talks of being good to your fellowman, and in fact Dr. Christensen defined humility in those terms (which is where he erred) but in ethics one is good to their fellowman because it's the humane and socially responsible thing to do, whereas Dr. Christensen suggests that humility is spiritual in nature ... an almost indefinable quality which can bestow happiness on those who follow certain rules - actually pretty much Christlike behavior (though uttering the word "Christ" in supreme reverence is a sure way to insure you'll never be invited to another major university commencement speech).
Dr. Christensen's 'essay' was really a commencement speech to people who are mostly unreligious. Dr. Christensen does a pretty decent job for the most part in adapting the content to the capabilities and perceptions of his audience. Dr. Christensen knows by experience that when you speak of ethical and moral issues in an academic environment it is assumed that you will approach such subjects from a purely academic view. Even Christ said you adapt your message to the capability and needs of your audience (Matt. 7:6)
As such, of course I needed to remind myself while reading the essay of the challenge Dr Christensen faced in sharing essentially religious principles to a significantly unreligious, and in some cases anti-religious audience. It should be expected that man-made concepts would be inferior to the real deal - I need no greater testimony of the truths found in Sunday School than by comparing them with the rationale of men, of which terms Christensen certainly had to use to get the importance of humility across to a crowd that Mastered in skills to profit from greed, which is the opposite of humility.
That is incidentally what an MBA largely says: "I know how to take a vile thing called greed, and turn it into something useful that can result in good and wholesome outcome.", and in fact when you think about that ... what a noble thing to do. I'm not opposed to academia or the business ethic, and in fact I, like Dr. Christensen, believe the best of those things are utterly compatible with the best of religious ideals.
I was pleased to read that in his address Dr. Christensen relates his personal search for the divine, and the personal satisfaction he's received as a result. He went on a Mormon mission (like I did), and further mentions his efforts to understand the purpose of life and define his own mission ... something that would give his own life meaning. What's more is that he invites others to seek out the divine. He's actively involved preaching the word (even a link on his homepage to his testimony of our church), he is surely doing more good in that regard and far more effectively than I have. That's why I was surprised with how he taught some of the principles he discusses in his essay, but then again I remembered, he had to adapt the messaged to the abilities and mindset of his audience.
Above all it should be noted that his essay enumerates many recommendations to living a life with meaning and among those are many that have their roots in wholesome and good living ... beyond mere secular-humanism ... he's not afraid to refer to God and his personal dependence on him though not so bold to outwardly recommend the same to others, which recommendation probably wouldn't be welcome, but if his life is an example to follow his message there was clear: make God part of your life as I did an you'll be blessed as I have. Truly, there is no greater teacher than example.
To be sure, it's wonderful that that socially constructive ideas are championed by everyone who thought so highly of his piece. For starters, I was astonished to learn that the essay came about after he taught a class at Harvard on "Humility". I have a new found respect for Harvard, willing to stretch the concepts in Business Ethics to include concepts normally considered hindrances in Capitalist profit-maximizing methodologies such as maximizing greed. As much as I wish that they would acknowledge that the concept of humility is inherently religious in nature I should be happy that it's even taught at all. I'd love to teach a class on "Faith", or "Temperance", or above all ... "Love".
Sadly, if such topics were taught, I'm sure they'd be modified so that "Love", for example, wouldn't really mean what I know it means. The first thing they'd do is throw out the Sunday School definition for it and write their own. In fact it seems the first thing Dr. Christensen did in his class on humility was to entirely throw out the window pre-conceived notions of humility and develop their own definition based on their own observations.
I can't imagine what I'd have done in that environment. I've stood for religious principles on religious grounds before and have been threatened as a result. The world today in general can be very hostile toward religion. I like to think Dr. Christensen would have welcomed my ideas, even though they'd basically be what I've been taught in Sunday School since I find them so superior to the concepts he developed in their absence, and perhaps his essay would have ended up differently.
Apparently his strategy worked too, as Christensen's essay has been lauded by Harvard's alumni as some great revelation in which a number of profound edicts are issued. Reportedly the essay is being passed around by Harvard's elite as some great revelation. Even David Brooks of the New York Times sang it praises.
Wow ... what a wordy, long drawn out intro to the main portion and intent of this blog entry. Sorry, I need to work on being more succinct - perhaps my most grievous error in writing. Anyway, this is what I was intending on discussing:
If what he gave was Sunday School, part 1 "The milk before the meat", I thought I'd give Sunday School, part 2 "The milk vs. the meat", at least with regard to the subject of humility so it will be very evident how superior your understanding of any religious subject will be if acquired from a religious source. As such, I'm going to discuss one line from his essay, and it's the same line the blogger at bigthink.com thought was so profound. She (I'm assuming 'Lea' is a girl's name) said the line was "disruptive" and "proprietary", both which apparently are good things in the world of academics. It was this:
"You can only be humble if you feel good about yourself."
I can see how in some cases it may be true - and certainly how it would be appreciated in academic circles, so it's like the milk. The milk approach to figuring out what humility even means, a meandering approach, involves making stuff up to fit some loosely collected observations - and so we get Dr. Christensen's observation above (see here to learn how he reached this conclusion).
The meat of the concept of humility, a more rigorous approach, however shows how Dr. Christensen's statement is not true in some cases (if not the most important cases). For example, how does it relate to say a person who's just committed some grave error, like adultery? Let's repeat it with that scenario in mind: "You can only be humble if you feel good about yourself." - hmmmm. Dr. Christensen's statement wouldn't be just "disrputive", but flat-out and offensively wrong.
A little more discipline in his logic and Christensen's statement should have been transposed as follows: "You can only feel truly good about yourself if you are humble". (In fact, such a conclusion should have followed naturally when he considered his student's observations). Academic concept development and analysis is a messy process though ... a lot of mistakes are bound to happen along the way. At a minimum the student of spiritual matters should be acutely aware that all academic approaches are easily botched up in a 1000 different ways, whereas if you get truth from the source (like water from a well) ... well, it's pure and true from the start.
Discussing humility from a more "meat" (religious edicts) than "milk" (academic considerations) perspective also means delving into the original definition of humility. When Dr. Christensen crafted his speech he spoke of humility as an esoteric trait - something to which you aspire by behaving in a certain way. The meat of matter is that humility is not esoteric, but rather a very definable principle that everyone should firmly understand even if the definition isn't appreciated, and if well understood there is so much more learning available than how Dr. Christensen had to adapt the meaning of humility to meet the tolerance of his audience.
The real definition of humility is that it is a principle to which one commits themselves, not a reputation or condition that someone achieves or experiences by merely following certain rules. Again, humility is a principle of action not a result of actions. The principle simply states that you think you deserve no more than anyone else deserves and you feel compelled to act in accordance to that belief. Period. That's all humility means, nothing more, but as simple of a definition as that is the wonderful thing is that you can deduce all kinds of things from that simple definition - and that's where the resulting logistics of humility starts to get exciting...
For example, if you are humble then you think you deserve no more than anyone else deserves (just restating the definition), and if you think you deserve no more than anyone else deserves then you feel good about yourself when you get no more than anyone else gets. In other words: the humble person feels naturally good about themselves when they are charitable, and they feel out of balance with nature when they are selfish and are compelled to bring things back into balance. It's really quite a beautiful construct of logic in both it's simplicity and power.
"You can only be humble if you love yourself" is another axiom that becomes obvious when you consider how humility relates to love. In fact the deeper one delves into similar sunday school subjects as they are taught in the sunday school environment, the greater and more significant are the truths that are revealed and the logical constructs that result are far superior to what you can get via academic means in matters of moral significance.
What's more profound is that similarly simple yet powerful axioms can all be gained by going to Sunday School without taking a Harvard class on "Humility" by one of the Harvard's "most celebrated".
So Sunday School part 2 regarding humility is simply this: Being humble is a principle you decide to live by, not some indefinable condition or status enjoyed only by people who feel good about themselves. In fact, it's a recipe that when combined with charity guarantees feeling good about one's self. Now how much Zoloft would we really need if that was a truth the APA would be willing to admit? I know for a fact that my late father, a psychologist, recommended the terminally selfish patient to volunteer weekly at the food kitcher, or something similar, and it worked. That's not just psychology ... that's religion.
Hopefully Dr. Christensen's essay will hopefully get people thinking more about these things and go the next step to learn more on their own. It's a shame his hands were tied enough that his recommendations to live morally and ethically had to be taught from ideas that evolved in a class rather from where they originally came, but that they were taught at all is a great start. Dr. Christensen did what he thought was necessary in a forum that often sees religion as the enemy to science, and did much good in the process.
Stephen Covey, another LDS man, does a similar thing ... as an LDS person it was obvious to me that he used certain code words are replacements for words we use in our church, but otherwise his seminars sounded very much like what I've heard in church a hundred times. He just uses code words like "tradition" instead of "religion", or "deeply personal" instead of "spiritual", or "something greater" instead of "God", or "selfish behavior" for "sin". Good business people with sound moral compasses love it because it's what they should be getting in church, they thirst for it, but they aren't going to church to get it. If I switch the words back his seminars they sound exactly like a Sunday School lessons (and a very good ones at that).
I think there's nothing wrong with suiting the language to fit the audience. As long as it doesn't change the message it should not matter whatever language you use to promote the principles normally taught in sunday school. What's important is that you're promoting wholesome behavior in a world where words like "wholesome" are ever more disparaged as time goes on.
I've alluded to this above so let me stop beating around the bush. As much as I respect and think highly of Dr. Christensen and his effort to bring Sunday School principles ... concepts on which our nation was founded but are now disparaged, into our universities, he erred when he didn't provide more guidance when his class "defined" humility. He erred when he distanced himself what humility really means. I understand that he had to adjust his approach given his audience but I do not for example understand why he felt the need to redefine humility in a way that pretends there are no sinners. Was it precisely because he wanted to be "disruptive"? That is incidentally what he's known for ... promoting "disruptive ideas" (i.e., unusually innovative and presumably timely and appropriate ideas) in the business world.
I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that reinventing religious concepts from an academic standpoint deprives the student from all kinds of truths that had previously been revealed to others. The best policy when learning anything is to first learn everything others have to share on the matter. Then develop, seek greater guidance, go deep inside and grab what's waiting next to be discovered which no man has yet considered. The greatest thinkers are those who already possess all preexisting knowledge, who then and only then are suited to expand upon the overwhelming preponderance of preexisting knowledge.
There's one other thing that I think the would-be academic-sunday-school teacher (he who teachers religious principles in academic settings for the benefit of humanity) should do differently. The last line of Dr. Christensen's essay reads: "This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success." It's another good recommendation commensurate for people not quite ready to embrace that metric, but I think you should never assume an audience will get what you mean if you don't say it outright. In fact, Lea Carpenter didn't even get it ... her final conclusion about his essay was rather telling: "So the path is to find the path. The path is to find the right metric to measure the path. The more things change, the more they stay the same".
It's not a bad conclusion, but I suspect that wasn't Dr. Christensen was going for. So let me reveal that metric here: Charity is the metric, and charity is far more than doing stuff for others ... it's the subject of a thousand essays ... but the best of them are taught in Sunday School ... not at Harvard.
But if you don't go to Sunday School and you expect to get this direction from Harvard, you'll get it in a way that is at best "part 1", if it's even available there at all. We should be thankful that there are good people like Dr. Christensen who are willing to make an effort to bring such subjects into that environment.
Again, I think it's noteworthy that Dr. Christensen (or anyone for that matter) are bringing these principles back into public discourse where they enjoyed guiltless open discourse by our financial, political, and social founders of our country, and he deserves our respect and admiration ... he stands as a model for me of what to do when blessed as he's been blessed with success and a platform of respect within the academic world. I hope that most who hears such messages will feel the challenge and desire to go beyond mere allusions to religious ideals. I hope it wakens something inside them and that they look for part 2 where part 2 is to be found. The argument for a moral and ethical life is so much stronger when principles are taught in Sunday School rather than as developed via academic conjecture.
And perhaps Lea's conclusion is right if the path she finds is sunday school, though she and most other people need to rethink sunday school before they even give it a try. When people think of sunday school they think "yeah my kids can use that" but Sunday School is for grown-ups too ... it isn't just a bunch of stories about Jesus. In a grown-up Sunday School class you explore why humility is defined the way it is and why it is so superior to how Christensen's discusses it in his essay. You learn WHY humility is the enabling force behind both happiness, and misery ... and why both and when both emotions are appropriate and useful, and how humility enables a more enriching and fulfilling life. You learn in sunday school in words that are clear and unmistakable the very metric by which you should live your life (charity) and why it results in the greatest sense of personal peace, joy, and satisfaction - indeed resulting in a "meaningful life", as Dr. Christensen was trying to promote.
These are seeds of life-enriching truths of which Dr. Christensen already knew, but felt bound to not give them in full measure to his class, nor to the Harvard class of 2010 which received the commencement speach. But they got a taste, and for many they might not have been ready for any more than just a taste.
It's a step in the right direction ... and for many that's a huge step.
For those who want to go beyond that step they only need to get sunday school part 2, part 3, part 4 etc. Not by going to just any sunday school, but a good one for grown ups who ponder and ask the deep questions. Too many Pastors only spew ecumenical platitudes from the pulpit once/week without any substance but people need a more rigorous approach. One that's separate from the main services ... one with a sincere discussion leader who uses a good manual and asks the right questions, letting the class teach each other. One where they're invited to raise a hand and ask tough questions.
Sometimes it's hard time finding that. Even within my church a great Sunday School exists only when you make it that way for yourself. You have to study the lesson the week before and be ready with questions. If you challenge the instructor, in most cases they'll at least try to rise to the occasion, and if they don't ... maybe you can.
In summary I have my own recommendation for those who love learning of all kinds: Go to the institutions of men to learn the ideas of men, and to Sunday School to learn Sunday School truths. Go to both, but aim your efforts to get the best from the sources from where they first came pure and true.
For those who, like me, found it refreshing to see Christensen's ideas in academia, but also felt like they needed both more visibility and greater depth - don't be afraid. You can spread these truths without sounding religious ... though don't stray from the actual message, or from the definitions, or the concepts. Don't reinvent the wheel. Any religious person can write a good commencement speech if they know what words to use in place of the churchy words, but stay true to as much as you can. That's my "final recommendation".
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