Got Thumos?

What lights a fire in your heart? What drives you to get out of your comfort zone and set off into the dangerous unknown?  What is that inward power, that energy that gets a man or a woman out of their seats and into action–the kind of action that protects life and brings lasting change and good to society?  Where does that kind of heat come from?

The ancient Greeks had very rich languages and dialects.  Greek is a lot like math with its precision.  Many of us are familiar with the many Greek words for love, one of the most common and oft-misunderstood words we use.  Storge.  Phileo.  Agape.  And, of course, eros.  These words talk about the various manifestations of love.

They also gave us the word thumos.  Doctors and nurses will recognize its kinship with thymus, one of the organs in our immune system.  It is not a common word when used in the world of biblical studies—an area very important to many of us.

Thumos may be described as “an inner fire that motivates action.”  It is used of the soul, but, unlike psuche—from which we get words like “psychology”—it describes the soul with a fire lit under its seat.  It is protective by nature.

I first came into contact with writer Paul Coughlin a few years back.  His book No More Christian Nice Guy radically took apart my idea of virtue, namely, that being nice and being good are not necessarily the same thing.  Jesus is the embodiment of goodness.  But he wasn’t always nice.  And He didn’t always play nicey-nice.  He would get into a lot of trouble today, upsetting the applecart.  Being good, rather than just nice, has a way of doing that.

I’ve been reading another of Coughlin’s books lately.  Unleashing Courageous Faith: The Hidden Power Of A Man’s Soul picks up on the themes introduced in NMCNG.

Thumos is the fire, the motivation that enabled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to champion civil rights—a fight that ended in his death.  It enabled Martin Luther to challenge a corrupt and ossifying Church with the need of reform.  It enables people to defend those who are bullied.  It is the enables action—change of behaviour—not simply a change in an intellectual position, a modified idea.  To use one of Bill Hybels’s favorite metaphors, it’s what pushes Popeye to say, “That’s alls I can take; I can’t takes it no more.”  Then out comes the spinach, the muscle and the bad guys are put in their place.

So….how’s your thumos level today?

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The Crash of ’29: One Effect

Wall Street, October 1929

“In many ways the effect of the crash on embezzlement was more significant than on suicide. To the economist embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months, or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in — or more precisely not in — the country’s businesses and banks. This inventory — it should perhaps be called the bezzle — amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle. In good times people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.”

–John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

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The Problem With Shortcuts

“I do not deny that many appear to have succeeded in a material way by cutting corners and by manipulating associates, both in their professional and in their personal lives. But material success is possible in this world and far more satisfying when it comes without exploiting others.” (Alan Greenspan)

Bernie Madoff.  Michael Milken.  Ivan Boesky.  Charles Ponzi.  Jack Abramoff.   Enron.

The aforementioned are catalogued in the annals of infamy for cutting corners financially, hurting a lot of people and ending up in jail.  Greed and hubris motivated them all.  Plus the fatal narcotic of self-deception, thinking they could get away with their crimes.

There is no shortcut to the building of a large and stable estate.  Wealth grows in the soil of patience, competence and hard work.  There are no substitutes.

A good deal of the writings in the book of Proverbs came from Solomon, son of David, Israel’s wisest and wealthiest king.  Here is what he had to say about the acquisition of wealth:

• Pro 28:8  Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.
• Pro 28:19  Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.
• Pro 28:22  A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him.
• Pro 10:4  A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
• Pro 21:17  Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.
• Pro 22:16  Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty.
• Pro 13:11  Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.

Avoid like the plague the get-rich-quick mentality.  Build your estate, your wealth, day by day, dollar by dollar on a foundation of hard work, thrift, competence and compassion.  You are not Gordon Gecko.  You’re better than that.  Avoid the siren song of cutting corners and coloring outside of the lines to get ahead.

“Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.” (Sophocles)

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Duty: The Badge of Honor

I remember the day President Ronald Reagan was shot.  I was an 11^th grader, just home from school and watched the now-famous footage of the assassination attempt.  Thankfully, no one died though Press Secretary James Brady was left debilitated by the shot he took to his forehead.

I remember seeing a photo montage of the shooting in Newsweek some years later.  In one of the photos, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy (shown in the above photo) was shown jumping in the air, spread-eagle, making as big a target as he could to protect the president.  He too took a bullet.  Why? Because his duty was to lay his life down for the President of the United States.  And he was a man of honor.

Some time ago my wife and I were discussing relationships and interactions.  We hit upon a characteristic of this generation, something to which we—though older—are not immune.  It is the unrealistic drive to have everything now.

Quantum leaps in technological innovation have taken place over the past thirty years or so, especially with the advent of in-home personal computing.  The upside of these advancements has been the ability to do in moments what used to take days, even years.

But there is a downside.

When you live in an instant, microwave, “I-need-this-yesterday” culture, you become habituated internally to getting whatever you want whenever you want it.  Unfortunately life does not work that way.  The best things still take time.

Here are a few sober earmarks of the “microwave” society:

• Debt.  Easy credit has made it possible for people in their teens and twenties to rapidly accumulate lots of stuff that took their grandparents a lifetime of thrift and prudence to purchase.  And with such rapid acquisition comes a mountain of debt, including compounded interest.
• A monstrous sense of entitlement.  An increasingly litigious society with plenty of social programs as fallbacks has helped to produce a generation of employees who often feel like they are unfairly burdened by the demand to work while on the clock.  The result: Personal service is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  This is a trend.  Thankfully, there are exceptions.
• A disturbing lack of self-control.  We hear often of things being “an emergency” or “urgent.”  But one needs to define the terms carefully.  A cardiac arrest needs to be fixed now.  A plane falling out of the sky needs to be fixed now.  But a teen upset at a parent who says “no” to them does not constitute an emergency.  Nor a thousand other similar “stresses.”

What is the key then to reversing this unhealth?

Duty.

Duty is that sense of personal and corporate responsibility that takes the interest of others and the interest of the group before personal considerations.  It’s not about me.  Or you.

Duty is what has made societies great.  Its abandonment in favor of personal fulfillment—others rights and concerns be damned—is what has eroded the same great societies.  We don’t have to let that happen here.

Duty means that a man who has a wife or children has a sacred obligation to provide for their needs.  And believe me, there is a world of difference between what one needs versus what one wants.

Duty means that an employee gives eight hours work for eight hours pay.  Without an attitude.

Do your duty today.  It is not glamorous but it is a mark of true greatness.

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The Laser-Like Power of Focus

One of the very early goals President John F. Kennedy set before the eyes of our nation in 1961 was to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.

Our nation, led by a brilliant team at NASA, rose to meet this challenge.  On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface and uttered these famous words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The secret to NASA’s success? Unity and focus.

Diffused light will light a room and help you see things.  It might even make you feel warm.

A laser—which is focused light—can cut through steel.

I am stunned by the accomplishments of human beings of every stripe who unify, focus and stick to a task, gathering all of their energies toward one important end.  Moveable type.  Flight.  Space exploration.  Atomic fission.  Civil rights.  The list is endless.

In Genesis 11, the Bible tells the story of a group of people who gathered in Mesopotamia and began building an ancient stairway to heaven—the Tower of Babel.  It was quite a focused effort.

And it got the attention of God.  God.

God said, “”Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

Did you notice the last sentence?

“And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

God interrupted the building of the Tower.  But that is not the point of this post.  God Himself took note of a people, unified in purpose and what they could accomplish together.  There’s really no evidence that these people were in covenant relationship with God.  Indeed it seems to be this lack of a relationship with Him that prompted Him to break up the party.  Because “nothing…will now be impossible for them.”

If ordinary human beings, who did not appear to be seeking the God of Adam, Enoch and Noah could accomplish such things, what about people who love Him and want to accomplish His purposes?  Dreams and visions He’s put in their hearts?  “Impossible” tasks? (That’s what they said about flight before the Wright brothers lifted off.)

You have incredible potential as you concentrate, focus and rise up to meet challenges.  What’s your target?  End cancer?  Defeat world hunger by developing new food strains?  Increase world literacy?  Make every published work known to man available in any language in e-book form (the vision of Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos)? Fulfil the Great Commission one life at a time?  Go.  Focus.

You will be amazed.

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Reagan On Freedom

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

–Ronald Reagan

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Good And Evil In The Heart

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.

Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.”

–Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956)

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Remember….

Freedom is not free.  It comes at a price.  I live in northern New York just outside of Fort Drum, headquarters of the 10^th Mountain Division.  Drum is one of the most heavily deployed Army bases in the United States.  It may be the heaviest.

I have seen soldiers return from war—if they even do.  Many have paid with their lives.  Those coming home face challenges that only a soldier who has seen the hell that is war could possibly understand.  Families in shambles, mental health challenges (read PTSD), some no longer having limbs.  And more.

Today is Memorial Day.  A day of remembering.  Sacrifice is not on the short list of a society given to consumption and self-fulfillment.  But it is one of the prices of freedom.  Sacrifice on the battlefield and unselfishness, even restraint, at home.  It is the foundation of any society that long endures.  Its lack portends the eventual collapse of the same.  Obviously, we as a nation are in some trouble if we don’t recover once again this heroic virtue.

Say thank you.  Just do it.  They’ve all willingly thrown themselves under the bus for you.

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The Value of Difficulty

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19)

Problems.  Difficulties.  Challenges.  Tough situations.

Do these serve any other purpose besides stressing us out and making our lives chronically and acutely unhappy?

When our first parents ate the forbidden fruit from the tree God set off-limits, it plunged the human race into an existence where work no longer was sheer joy.  Work became, well, work.

We’re not told what kind of fruit they ate.  We don’t know that it was an apple.  We only know that the eating of it produced undesirable consequences.

Is there more than just misery as a result of this?

There is.  God told man the ground was cursed for his sake.  Other translations say, “Cursed is the ground because of you.”  There are some very helpful things that issue from this as we approach our the work of our lives.

• Work became difficult.  But it is this very difficulty that helps us grow and learn to solve problems.  This very difficulty acts as resistance to develop muscle in us.
• Work became a more time-consuming pursuit to grant yield.  This helps us 1) stay out of trouble because a long week’s worth of work tires us out and 2) it gives us appreciation for a job well exerted and well done.
• The work in our fallen world teaches us our reliance upon God and the consequences of bad choices.  When you experience difficulty that issues from this state of things, it is a reminder to do the right thing.

Nobody enjoys stress, but it can work in one’s favor.  Leverage and grow from it!

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Think Different

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

–Steve Jobs/Apple Inc.

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