WILLIAM BENNETT: EDUCATIONAL QUALITY

 

As a person heavily invested in schooling and learning, I am drawn to William Bennett. He has been a professor, university administrator, non-profit leader, government official, social commentator, conservative pundit, writer, historian, and is currently a semi-retired podcaster. Bennett is the author and co-author of about two dozen books.

Bennett was born on July 31, 1943, in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. A self-described “streetwise” kid, he attended both public and Catholic schools. His father left the family, and his mother moved to Washinton DC with William and his older brother Robert where he graduated from Gonzaga High School. With the absence of his father, Bennett’s football coach became a role model for him as did actors, athletes, and presidents. He believes that heroes and adult encouragement play key roles in a child’s moral development.

Bennett attended Williams College, a liberal arts school in western Massachusetts, to study philosophy and to play football. A lineman, he was nicknamed “The Ram” stemming from an incident in which he butted down the door to a female student’s dorm room..

In addition, he received wise counsel from his brother Robert, who went on to become a high-profile defense attorney. The 1960s was a tumultuous decade featuring the Civil Rights Movement and opposition to the Vietnam War among other events. At the forefront of unrest was the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) which was popular on college campuses, Bennett desired to join the SDS but brother Robert talked him out of it warning him that affiliation whit the group would hurt him in the future.

Upon graduation from Williams in 1965, Bennett enrolled at the University of Texas to study political philosophy under the tutelage of John Silber, another mentor who would guide Bennett. He also played guitar in a band named “Plato and the Guardians”, a nod to Republic by the esteemed ancient Athenian philosopher. Bennett also had a blind date with the rock star Janis Joplin; he remembered her as a rather sad and lonely person. Upon earning his PhD he was advised by Silber to teach at a state university rather than at liberal arts meccas like Oberlin or Williams. So Bennett taught philosophy and religion at the University of Southern Mississippi for a year before departing for Harvard to earning his law degree. He later recalled that in Mississippi he was considered a liberal and at Harvard a conservative but he had not changed his values.

Bennett spent the early 1970s in various teaching and administrative positions at Boston University where Silber had become president. He became the executive director of the National Humanities Center in 1976, Bennett’s involvement with the humanities and the national shift to conservatism following the perceived cultural excesses of the 70s decade also prompted a shift in Bennett. He changed his party registration from Democratic to Republican, He also found another mentor in Ronald Reagan who was elected president in 1980. Reagan appointed Bennett director of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1981 and Secretary of Education in 1984.

As Secretary of Education, Bennett reinvented the cabinet position from secondary status to that of “bully pulpit” centered on the three Cs. As Bennett explained in an article entitled “Teaching the Right Stuff” (Kappan, October 26, 2020)-

·       Content- Every student is entitled to a rigorous and enriched curriculum infused with Western values.

·       Character- The ethos of our schools matters as character of our students is developed by rule, precept, and most importantly, by example.

·       Choice- Parents and students deserve to choose the schools best for them- public, charter, private, or parochial

Bennett, in addition, supported school vouchers, curriculum reform, classical education, and religion in education as well as decried the use of affirmative action. He urged stronger enforcement of drug laws on campuses. He opposed education bureaucracies, calling them “the blob.” He criticized schools for having low standards and it a regular practice to visit classrooms to teach.

Bennett’s pronouncements caused controversies, but he was supported by President Reagan. A story circulated in DC circles that during one cabinet meeting the President brought in copy of the Washington Post featuring an article dealing with Bennett. Bennett himself thought he was going to be chastised by the President for embarrassing the White House. Instead, Reagan said that Bennett had been busy and when were the other cabinet secretaries going to catch up with him. Just before Reagan left the presidency after two terms, Bennett resigned and began a private legal practice.

But Bennett’s hiatus from government service proved to be short. The new incoming president, George H.W. Bush, appointed Bennett to our first Director of National Drug Control Policy (aka “drug czar”). He brought the same activist mindset and practices to advocate against drugs as he did as Secretary of Education promoting quality education for all students. Bennett resigned from that position in 1990, and his best-selling work was The Book of Virtues, which he edited, was published in 1993. Other books by him focus on moral development, school curriculum, Western values, American patriotism, and Christian themes.

Bennett also served on boards of companies, especially those focusing on educational innovation. He currently writes for national publications and is a guest contributor on Fox News and other news outlets. As previously stated, Bennett is now a semi-retired podcaster and makes his primary home in North Carolina where he lives with his wife Elayne whom he married in 1982.

 

Lessons learned:

1.     Every American deserves a quality education regardless of zip code.

2.     A balanced education is infused with Western values augmented with Christian (and other religious) appreciation and American ideals.

3.     Work and service know no age limits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PETER DRUCKER: INTELLECTUAL INQUIRY

 Peter Drucker is hailed as the founder of modern management. Often pigeon-holed as a business theorist, Drucker was that and much more. He was also a philosopher, professor, social commentator, and author of more than 30 books and numerous journal articles. He was an interdisciplinary thinker par excellence, and I maintain the last Renaissance Man.

I was first introduced to Drucker while a first-year student at the University of Oklahoma. While browsing through a local bookstore I came across a recent publication of The Concept of the Corporation, a book written by Drucker following World War II. Previously I had always thought of a corporation as a given and not a theoretical concept. And then through the years I was exposed to an expansive view of Drucker and his thinking cumulating to me being the founding president of the Drucker Society of Kansas City.

The lure of Drucker was cemented to my own leadership practice was accomplished through my study of Drucker’s life. He was born on November 19, 1909, in Vienna Austria into a cultured European family; his mother had studied medicine, and his father was an attorney and bureaucrat. Throughout his childhood and youth Drucker was exposed to leading intellectuals and artists of the day. Following the completion of his secondary education, Drucker moved to Germany for greater opportunities.

Drucker enrolled in the University of Hamburg and was employed in a day job as a clerk at a cotton commodity trading firm. While in Hamburg, he attended a opera production that was written by Verde when he was 80 years of age, He also read Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. These two activities had a profound impact on him as he began to understand that life imposes few limits on creative activity and that there is merit in history and traditions undergirding and guiding our creativity.

Drucker then moved to Frankfurt am Main where he enrolled in Goethe University of Frankfurt where he completed his doctorate in international and public law with his dissertation on the law of the sea and became a reporter and editorial writer for the city’s leading newspaper. Drucker witnessed with distaste the rise of Naziism in Germany, so he decided to move to England. While in London he worked first as an security analyst for an insurance company, then as the chief economist for a bank. In 1937, he married Doris Schmitz, a fellow university student from Frankfurt who went on to earn her own doctorate in physics.

Before leaving for the United States shortly after his marriage, Drucker had two insights. First, he realized that the rise of Nazism in Germany could in large measure could be blamed on organizations in all three sectors- public, private, and service- failing to enable people to find meaning for their lives. His second insight came from attending the Cambridge University seminars of the famed economist John Maynard Keynes. While Keynes focused on the behavior of commodities Drucker discovered he preferred to focus on the behavior of people,

Shortly after arriving in the United States Drucker became a freelance journalist, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College where he taught economics and later at Bennington College where he taught politics and philosophy. Then Drucker’s professional life took a trajectory professional life that brought him fame. With the entry of the United States into World War ll in December 1941, there was a need not only for people to be in the armed forces, but also for civilians to support directly the war effort. Drucker fell into the latter category. The Board of Economic Warfare secured his services and Drucker found that he had no title to describe his services. So he reached back into English literature to the fictional “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes. So, Drucker fashioned himself a consultant and thus became the first person to use that title in an official capacity. (But he detested the term “guru”- he maintained that people use that title because they do not know how to spell charlatan!).

Towards the end of the war, Drucker was asked by the CEO of General Motors to study the operations of GM and report his findings. Although his conclusions did not find favor with the CEO, his published report, The Concept of the Corporation, was popular with the public (and it was this book that that had introduced me to Drucker). In 1950, following the success of his GM report, he became professor of management at New York University where his seminal work The Practice of Management was written (and published in 1954): the book has been reprinted with revisions numerous times.

In 1971, Drucker was appointed the Clark Professor of Social Science at Claremont Graduate University in southern California where his fame grew. He developed one of the nation’s first Executive MBA programs for working professionals and mentored a diverse group of leaders including Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric; farm labor organizer Caesar Chavez; Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church; and business researcher and writer Jim Collins. In fact, Collins once remarked that the thought that Good to Great, his own work, should have been titled “Drucker was Right!”

Claremont named its school of management the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management in 1987 (later renamed the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management). Drucker established the Drucker Archives at Claremont in 1999 which became the foundation of the Drucker Institute in 2006. Drucker taught his last class in 2002 and died on November 11, 2005 at the age of 95.

Peter Drucker, in addition to what I have written, left behind a rich legacy

·       He coined the term knowledge worker to describe the person who works with his/her mind. There are several implications to having knowledge knower prevalent in society. Knowledge workers can be mobile, living and working from most anywhere in the world. Yet, most knowledge workers will not be promoted to the top of their organizations. So, to continue to find meaning in their lives and work, they will need to develop additional skills or hobbies. In the long term, a divide will split knowledge workers who will be highly valued and service workers who will exist, as economist Tyler Cowan explains, cheap food and cheap entertainment, because of the nature of their labors. Knowledge workers will need to take the lead to insure service workers also find meaning in their lives and work.

·       Management because it deals with primarily people and not commodities (the Keynesian approach) is a liberal art like history, economics, political science, psychology, etc. Organizing people and resources to complete common endeavors is worthy of our study and aspirations. It was this Drucker insight that prompted me to challenge Collins on his comments regarding hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs are highly skilled in one area and do it well while foxes have numerous skills and interests. Collins maintains that hedgehogs are more effective in leading organizations because of their focus. In contrast, I maintain that foxes are more effective because of their diversity of thought.

·       Intellectual inquiry to know how things originate and work is necessary for anyone aspiring to manage others. Drucker set the example for us by writing two novels among his approximately three dozen books and by learning new subjects every three years or so. For example, Drucker’s self-study led him to become an expert in Japanese art.

MAGA AND THE MAINSTREAM PRESS

 [This essay was originally sent to Baptist News Global in response to an opinion article publish on Trump, MAGA, and the Press. It is slightly revised here.]

For the sake of transparency, I confess that I have voted for Donald Trump to be our president three times. Nevertheless, I do not consider myself to be a Trump supporter nor a card-carrying MAGA member. In fact, in 2016, I was prepared to vote for Governor Gary Johnson until my wife and late daughter talked me out of it. This past election cycle I toyed with voting for Robert Kennedy, Jr but decided even before he endorsed Trump to vote for the GOP ticket especially with JD Vance as the Veep candidate. As a political independent I fully expect that each party put forth their best candidates for each voter to consider.

That being said, I believe that the mainstream press has been, and in some cases continue to be, corrupt, misleading, and nasty towards Trump, MAGA, supporters, and mere voters like me.  My definition of the mainstream press is expansive and includes newspaper editorial boards, and opinion writers, and television hosts and pundits who regularly appear on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, and sometimes even on Fox News. Examples include-

·       When the Obama Justice Department headed by Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama’s self-described wingman, wiretapped then-Fox News correspondent James Rosen and others, I read and heard almost nothing from the so-called freedom loving mainstream press.

·       Lies and hoaxes like “there are fine people on both sides,” Russian influence on Trump, and “there is going to be a bloodbath” were supported by the mainstream press. (I personally was repulsed by Trump’s Charlottesville “fine people” quote until I conducted my own research and discovered the true context.)

·       The mainstream press, as did President Biden and Vice President Harris, often compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini (I wonder why never to Stalin- I will leave the answer to the reader’s imagination.) As a historian and former public school history teacher, I find the lack of context provided by the mainstream press to be disgusting, unethical, and morally bankrupt.

·       When it came to the Hunter Biden laptop story, the mainstream press demonstrated no interest in digging deeper. Rather, it put its support behind the 51 intelligence “experts” who lied to the public claiming the laptop was a Russian disinformation campaign.

·       President Biden was as “sharp as a tack” and would “run circles around the White House staff.” Really? This was yet another example of the mainstream press support for government lies over the public interest.

·       My final example concerns Aurora, Colorado and the danger posed by Venezuelan gangs. The mainstream press continues to booster the false assertions of the state governor and city mayor that there is nothing to see here,

Despite the seriousness of these examples, I do not advocate for press censorship. Rather, I prefer accountability and fairness like the 16 million dollar fine imposed against ABC for one of its correspondents repeatedly referring to Trump as a convicted rapist. I do think it is wrong to sue the Des Moines Register newspaper for its wacky state poll it published days before the election.

While the above examples are serious acts of bias from the mainstream press, I believe that a more thorough case of incompetence can be brought. Incompetence that stems largely from a general lack of intellectual curiosity, thinking like an elite globalist, and acting like everything has the potential impact of Watergate. The fall of the mainstream press will not come from the Trump Administration but from its hubris and sloppy thinking. The Washington Post may be correct that “democracy dies in darkness” but it can also die from lies and deceits against the vey folks it seeks to inform.

[Note to the reader: The editor of the Baptist News Global refused to publish the above opinion essay that I submitted. Below is the email exchange that we had. I will leave it to the reader to decide the accuracy of the examples that I used.]

 

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

Joe, I will not publish this. You are entitled to your perspective, but you are not entitled to misrepresent documentable facts. The examples you give are misleading and incomplete and sometimes flat-out wrong.

I’m happy to publish pieces that disagree with my own views, but I will not publish false information.

MY RESPONSE:

Thanks for your consideration and quick response. It is good to know your editorial policy of Baptist News Global and I will attempt to adhere to that policy in the future. By the way, what happened to the Findley Edge article I submitted several months ago?

Nevertheless, I am curious to know what was false in the in the opinion piece just submitted. I reread the letter several times and thought I was fair to the facts. Can you and I disagree over the meaning and significance of the facts? Yes!

Albeit, we Baptists can be a disagreeable lot. No hard feelings. Perhaps we will connect again next year. Have a Merry Christmas

 

MORE NUANCE NEEDED

 [This essay was originally a Letter to the Editor in response to an article that appeared in an issue of Bostonia, the alumni magazine of Boston University.  I graduated from BU in 1978 with a Master of Education degree.]

 

I have concerns about some of the assertions made by BU faculty members in “Is Our Democracy at Risk?” (Summer 2024).

First, the United States is a constitutional republic, a restrained form of democracy with checks and balances among three co-equal branches of government, a two-house national legislature, and an electoral system of selecting the president. To simply say the US is a democracy is to raise assumptions our Founders never intended.

Second, no evidence is presented with the assertion of voter suppression.  Indeed, required photo ID is easily acquired and is not a barrier to the franchise. While there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, as long as humans and not angels are voting there will be fraud, and voter IDs help in maintaining trust that our votes truly count.

I trust that future articles of this sort published in the Bostonia will be more balanced and nuanced reflecting the complexities of our federal system.

 

Joe D. Marlow

Wheelock ‘78

Olathe, Kans

THE GOD WHO DELIVERS & GUIDES: MY ENCOUNTER WITH EXODUS

The summer of 1988 found my wife, our two children, and me living in an eastern state hundreds of miles from our home in Oklahoma. I was working in a moderate-sized non-profit organization providing services to about 300 direct clients and numerous others. I was the executive responsible for education and outreach, and reported to the CEO, the only other fulltime executive on staff. While the work was stressful, I did feel our organization was having an increasingly positive impact in the community.

Then the bottom dropped out. It was a Monday morning, and I was preparing to leave town for a work-related meeting lasting until Friday. Just before departing the CEO called me into his office and he matter-of-factly informed me that my position was being eliminated due to budget cuts. He told me that our revenue collections was down significantly and that our organization could not support two fulltime executives the following calendar year. So, I had about 4-5 months to find another job.

I immediately did not share this information with my wife because I did not desire her to worry about this situation alone. I drove several hours to the retreat center for the meeting processing all that I knew. I continue to process for the next several days. Then about mid-week it happened.

During a break in the meeting I was resting on the bed in my room. I was in the in-between zone of awake and asleep when I heard an audible voice saying, “Get up and go to town!” Now, I am a very rational person but I knew instantly the voice commanding me was God’s. So, I instinctively obeyed. I drove to a city totally unfamiliar to me, went to a mall I had never visited before, and entered a bookstore I obviously had never shopped in before. And in a minute or so, I found it.

“It” was a book entitled The Presence: The God Who Delivers and Guides by Bruce Larson, a Presbyterian pastor from Seattle. The book was a study of Exodus found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Exodus details how God delivered the Hebrew slaves from Egyptian captivity and guided them to the Promised Land. I purchased the book, returned to the retreat center, and began reading it.

In effect, the Exodus became my story of how God delivered my family and me, and guided us back towards home. Exodus was not just “their” story; Exodus became my story, also. My approach to Exodus at least in this sense was personal and not a formal academic study.  Indeed, by the January 1, 1989, we were living in Overland Park, Kansas, a few hours drive north of our home in Oklahoma. I was also again gainfully employed in yet another non-profit with similar challenges (and that is another story).

Some time later I wrote Bruce Larson, the author, to share my experience in finding his book and the impact reading it had on me. I received a very gracious reply from him. I have regretfully lost his letter.

Before leaving that eastern state and moving to Kansas, I was surprised by some research I conducted. I knew that the CEO had on occasion played loose with the truth. When I discovered that he was engaging in immoral (but not illegal) behavior, I checked the dates of when he commenced that behavior and when our organizational revenues began to show marked decline. They had occurred within a week of each other! In addition, when his behavior became the stuff of rumors in our community, he was fired after an investigation and left before I did. Pharaoh tried to outsmart everyone else and we know how that ended!

 

COLLEGE IS NOT FOR EVERYBODY

 

[This letter was sent in response to an article in BUWHEELOCK, the alumni magazine of the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development at Boston University. I graduated from BU in 1978 with a Master of Education degree.]

 

Concerning the recent 2023 issue of BUWHEELOCK I applaud the efforts of Anthony Abraham Jack to improve college access and culture for first generation students as he brings passion and commitment to the task.  Nevertheless, I am concerned about the title highlighted on the front cover- College Is For Everybody. I frankly disagree for several reasons.

First, some high school graduates do not possess the intellectual wherewithal to glean the benefits of the college experience. They are not dumb, rather they are unable or unwilling to assume the “life of the mind” to read, write, and think across the disciplines. They perhaps are more suited for vocational schools where they can be trained in high-paying skills and work with their hands. America needs skilled farmers, plumbers, electricians, etc. in which a traditional four-year college degree may or may not be applicable for success.

Granted, some students need lived life experiences before assuming the collegiate experience. For example, Vice President JD Vance served in the US Marine Corps before entering college and law school. Others enter the civilian workforce as one of my high school classmates did. After working in a factory for several years he decided college was for him and upon graduation, became a teacher and coach and later a school administrator before retiring.

And yet others go directly to college from high school without a plan, major in “insane” subjects, do not learn from the things that matter, run up ridiculous debts, and eventually drop out. Family and peer pressures often contribute to a warped sense of what the “good life” looks like for everyone.

Second, if the meaning of college in the article is the traditional brick-and-mortar school like BU, then college is definitely NOT for everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed studying for my master’s degree at BU. (Confession- I did my BU graduate studies in Europe while I was serving in the US Army.} But to go to Boston directly from a small farm town in Oklahoma would have been a disaster for me.

Many students need better options than traditional universities. Some would benefit greatly from community college and then a traditional university or an online platform. I have been an instructor on two online platforms. Contrary to what many critics think, online schools have academic standards, often rigorous ones.

 

 

I have been an instructor on two online platforms. Contrary to what many critics think, online schools have academic standards, often rigorous ones. For example, my son attended community college and then enrolled at a state university but left without a degree. Well into adulthood he entered Colorado State University Global Campus and once his online studies had concluded, he received an excellent job offer which he accepted. The graduation ceremony in the Denver area drew over 1.000 students, many of whom lived and worked well beyond Colorado.

That being said, I believe that traditional universities like BU have a moral obligation to assist first generational or others generally considered non-traditional students to be successful once those students are admitted to the university. This moral obligation makes the efforts of Anthony Abraham Jacks vital for both BU and its students.

In closing, I have an idea to propose to BU’s leadership. Create a preparatory academy for those students seeking admission into BU, but data shows they have the propensity to drop out before they complete their courses of study. The prep academy could be a natural extension of the work currently done by the Newbury Center. The mission of such a prep academy to is to place these students into a rigorous academic university setting and provide them with wrap-around services like academic counseling and testing to help ensure these students are a good fit for BU and if not, offer them entry into a partner community college for delayed admission into BU. Granted, attendance at the prep academy would extend their BU experience by an extra year, but BU could offer scholarships and other incentives to help make the prep academy worthwhile for the students needing this academic structure.

                                                                                      

JULY 24, 1651: ANTHONY JOHNSON AND THE NCM THEORY OF HISTORY

 Monday, July 24, 1651.dawned to the residents of this planet promising to be yet another normal day in their lives, as well as normal could be. Three centuries and 72 years later, Monday, July 24, 2023, dawned to the residents of this planet promising to be yet another normal day, as well as normal could be. Nevertheless, our normality on both dates was strangely altered by one Anthony Johnson.

But first, let’s examine what happened in 2023. Florida’s educational authorities had adopted new state standards for teaching slavery to their students in middle school. Vice President Harris then came to Florida to passionately decry those standards as being racist because of a single reference that slavery did have a minor positive role in teaching the slaves valuable skills even though all other slavery references in the standards cast the institution as horrific and inhumane. And then on Monday, the 24^th. the chorus of progressive media voices began damning the standards on the same key of outrage.

There are several ironies here. First, Harris probably did not read all the standards. Indeed, one of her political handlers essentially admitting the fact when he defended her by saying she was speaking from her heart, not from her head. Second, Harris in a debate preceding the 2016 presidential election passionately attacked the eventual winner for racist attitudes but gleefully accepted the candidacy for the number two office from the same man she had denounced in the debate, Third, most progressives and too many conservatives for that matter do not  have a sense of history. Or they or their advisors would have had known about Anthony Johnson. Thank goodness that the researchers for my “This Day in History” calendar knew about Johnson.

On Monday, July 24, 1651, Anthony Johnson became one of the first Black landowners in America, my calendar reported to me. So, 32 years after the first import of slaves to Virginia and hence to all the American colonies, a Black man could own property in a colony with slaves.  (So, another nail in the coffin of the false premise of the 1619 Project!) But Johnson’s story gets richer.

The records are sketchy but according to the calendar and a Wikipedia entry, Johnson was living in Portuguese Angola where he was captured by slavers and found his way to England where he learned English. He then became an indentured servant in the Virginia colony. Once his contract expired, Johnson was granted his freedom and was granted more than 200 acres of land. He and his wife Mary then had their own slaves (my emphasis). Eventually Johnson and his household moved to the Eastern Shore on Virginia’s portion of the Delmarva Peninsula and then on to Maryland to avoid the pressures of increased slave ownership and legal questions. The Johnson family tree becomes obscure at this point but some scholars speculate that descendants of Anthony and Mary migrated to Delaware and North Carolina.

Anthony Johnson and his life is but one reason why I ascribe to the NCM Theory of history- that history is nuanced, contradictory, and messy. And as such, I highly recommend to progressives and to conservatives alike to stop “weaponizing” history for their own narrow political agendas.  As my long passed mentor Edmund Burke famously stated, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

GOD: INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE BOX?

The senior pastor at my church is a terrific preacher. He can take any enigmatic biblical text and make it come alive with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He also preaches with passion and energy, and with honesty about himself and his own spiritual condition. So, when it comes to a place where I and the pastor may disagree, if ever so slightly, on the interpretation of a text, I do so humbly.

Before going on, I confess that we Baptists can be a disagreeable lot. Perhaps our disposition is tied to our doctrine of priesthood of the believer in that we listen to our preachers and yet we also have a responsibility to listen to what God’s Spirit is telling us through our consciences. We may have free pulpits but we also have free pews.

Our pastor is currently preaching a sermon series on the Book of Romans in the Christian New Testament. Recently, in his sermon on Romans 4:16 and following, he stated that God is “outside the box” when it comes to God’s supernatural power. Since I am more of an “inside the box” kind of guy, my ears perked up. Permit me to “unpack the box” to give some context to my argument here.

In an earlier essay that was first published in my blog and later in Reflections, I wrote-  

          “The United States Marine Corps is known for its creativity and flexibility. For example, potential Marine officers at Officer Candidate School must face a grueling and often revealing exercise called the Reaction Course. Officer candidates are split into teams of four and taken to an area which resembles a children’s playground. There is rope, a barrel, a high wall, and two wooden poles present. The instructor presents each team with a scenario- one of the team has been severely wounded and the other team members must take him/her over a gully represented by the wall. The team has 15 minutes to accomplish the task.

The officer candidates are involved in a creative process called “think inside the box.” That is the opposite of what we are usually taught by teachers and consultants as we are told to think outside the box to be truly creative. While thinking outside the box is seen as the method to break through the stodgy traditional ways of problem solving and can indeed be very seductive, it is in reality a subversion of the creative process if it is seen as the only method to solve problems or even as the primary method. To think that we can pluck ideas from nothingness is to believe in magic, not creativity. Ideas we need to solve our problems are new combinations of existing ideas already in the box. To gain new insights we need to practice identifying, breaking, and creating patterns among the high quality “stuff” we currently possess.

Thinking inside the box is to make greedy, grateful use of limits (Imagination First). When I was an elementary school principal and needed to solve a problem one of the first questions I asked was, “What are my limits or constraints to solving this problem?” Knowing my limits presented me with what I called my “area of maneuver.” Acknowledging our limitations can be incredible prompts to imagination as limits beget inventiveness.”

Yet, how can an all-knowing and all-powerful God possess limits to divine knowledge and power? Paradoxically, God can choose limits, In the majestic and poetic prologue to the Gospel of John, the writer John declares, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (1:14a, CSB). Or, as wonderfully paraphrased, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (The Message)

The Apostle Paul continues the inside the box thinking in his Letter to the Philippians in which he declared,

          “Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus,

          who, existing in the form of God,

          did not consider equality with God

          as something to be exploited.

          Instead he emptied himself

          by assuming the form of a servant,

          taking on the likeness of humanity.

          And when he had come as a man,

          he humbled himself by becoming obedient

          to the point of death- even to death on a cross”

          {2:5-8, CSB)

 

Indeed, Jesus became like us. He hungered and thirst and had all the other human limitations. By having a human body Jesus was inside a box of sorts. And yet in all things, Jesus remained obedient to God the Father. He suffered the pains of death and yet, He rose from the grave. In doing so, He was outside the box.

 

Army West Point is having a wonderful football season. With ten wins and one loss (to Notre Dame), the Black Knights with a victory over arch-rival Navy will perhaps have their greatest season ever, even greater than the teams in the 1940s. In those years Army’s backfield possessed two amazing running backs who both won the Heisman Trophy in succeeding years- Felix “Doc” Blanchard (Mr. Inside) and Glenn Davis (Mr. Outside). Blanchard’s specialty was to run up the middle and Davis’s was to run sweeps. They formed one of the most powerful tandems of offense ever in college football.

Blanchard and Davis were indeed talented, and Army needed both to win football games. While their gridiron talents pale in comparison to the divine talents of God the Father and God the Son, they nevertheless illustrate the need for teamwork even among the Trinity.  Now we come to the chicken or egg question. Which comes first- the power or the limits? I will use another athletic illustration. An Olympic javelin thrower must have the power to throw the javelin but must put limits on himself/herself to put in the hours, the diet, and the overall training regimen to direct that power to throw for the distance to be successful. So, power before limitations.

On a personal note, my wife and I within the past year suffered the grief of losing our lovely and talented adult daughter to brain cancer. Nevertheless, through my faith in Christ and my study of the biblical texts and of secular history, I know that we will see our daughter again in the Resurrection. Her passing along with my advanced years and ailments had led me to a renewed interest in the Resurrection, Heaven, and New Jerusalem. Only a Divine Being with power and love outside the box of the human experience could prepare such an eternity for His followers. And only a Divine Being with power and love could place himself inside the box of human limits could communicate with us finites about the joys of following Him.

Finally, perhaps my pastor and I are both right about the box. It is where we place emphasis at any particular time at any particular place during any particular situation. Our God is both outside and inside the box simultaneously being where He needs to be to lead us to a saving knowledge of Him through Jesus Christ our Lord.