Donald Miller's Blog, page 91

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week

Well, Grandma Drummer rocked the vote last week. I hope you enjoy this week’s picks as well. Vote for your favorite below in the comments.

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog

Change the Way People Treat You, Starting With One Word

My life has been full of people who have treated me poorly. I’ve had bosses who expected too much and took advantage of my time and assumed I would work long hours beyond my pay. There have been boyfriends who gave very little and took far more than I ever wanted to give, and still had the nerve to act like it wasn’t enough. I’ve had friends who waltzed into my world, wrecked havoc, and then disappeared.

In fact, at certain times it has seemed like people did this to me on purpose — like I was some kind of target for those just waiting to inflict more hurt.

And in a way, I was.

The first time I heard someone say the words, “We teach people how to treat us,” I didn’t want to believe it was true. If it was, then much of the pain I had suffered over time was my fault as well as the fault of those who had inflicted it. That reality seemed painful and unfair. But at the same time, I felt the tiniest glimmer of hope at the sound of these words.

Because if they were true, if I could really teach people how to treat me, then there was hope of a world where people would treat me with the respect and care I deserved. So I decided to give it a try.

*Photo by sboneham, Creative Commons

For me, it started with the word no. This wasn’t a word I had used very often, so I had to practice. In the mirror. Literally.

No, you cannot have my phone number.

No, I won’t go on a date with you.

No, I can’t stay late this week.

No, I can’t help you with that project.

No, I won’t have a conversation with you when you’re angry.

No explanation. No defense. No justification for why I couldn’t do the thing someone else wanted me to do. Just the simply exerting of my power into the universe to choose what I wanted, to draw a boundary around myself.

It didn’t come naturally at first. I had to exercise it, like a muscle.

In fact, as I started to practice, I realized there were several lies I had been believing for so long, they had been preventing me from using the word no. I had to confront these lies and uproot them as I went along. They went like this:

• When I say “no” I’m being mean

• Wanting things is selfish

• Other people deserve to get what they want more than I deserve to get what I want

• I owe people an explanation for my actions

Sometimes I would try to explain myself and I would get tangled in my explanations, and feel like I had to backtrack or justify. Other times I would say “yes” when I meant to say “no” and I would have to go back and change my answer. It wasn’t always pretty. I hurt people’s feelings. I disappointed them. I lost friends, not because I was being mean or malicious, but because I wasn’t giving the things I had given so freely for so long.

• • •

But something wonderful started to happen when I said the word no. I realized I had the power to teach people how to treat me.

Three things happened:

1. People who cared more about what I was giving them than they did about me — went away. It’s amazing how fast people’s true motives are revealed when you cut them off from what they were stealing from you.

2. People who loved me, changed. It didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t seamless or easy, but those who really cared about staying in relationship with me changed the way they related to me. The best part is, many of them actually say they like me better now! Some of them say it’s like the real Ally came to life.

3. Even those who don’t know me treat me differently. It’s weird. It’s almost like I carry myself differently. I don’t have this figured out perfectly, but the feeling like I was a magnet or target for people who wreak havoc has disappeared.

It took me a long time to come to this place, probably about five years from the time I first started practicing “no” to the way I feel now — like I am not a victim to my circumstances or relationships, but that I’m a mutual participator in my life.

I only wish I would have started sooner.

• • •

What is one word you wish you would have started using sooner? Why?

Change the Way People Treat You, Starting With One Word is a post from: Storyline Blog

Thoughts on Creating Controversy as a Blogger

When I first started blogging, a friend told me that the internet is the wild west, and because it’s relatively new and ungoverned, there are no rules. Each person has to make up their own rules, and then stick to them.

I have a few rules, and chief among them is the one:

I’m a lover not a fighter.

I’m surprised how often people ask me to weigh in on this or that small scandal in faith-related happenings or the church world or Christian publishing, when this pastor says that thing about that other pastor, when so and so slams so and so on his blog, when this author writes negatively about that church or other author.

I’m not surprised that these questions are getting asked. In my most negative moments, I think that the internet is a lot like cable news: yelling and drawing lines in the sand, drumming up controversy for the sake of ratings. There are a lot of bloggers who jump on every single slightly controversial aspect of Christian culture and church life.

The fact that people are asking these questions doesn’t surprise me—but the fact that they’re asking me does surprise me, because I never bite, and unless something unforeseeable and dramatic changes in the future, I never will.

This is my rule: I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Some people use their online voices and platforms to highlight the differences between us. Some people use their voices to police the highways and byways of world wide web—that’s wrong! That’s bad! That’s not what I think! There are open letters and link ups, shout outs and name drops.

I don’t have anything against those bloggers. But I’m not going to be one. I’d imagine they believe that’s how lasting change in our communities will get made, or that opening those conversations brings into the light some ways that our community needs to grow. Maybe it does. I don’t know.

What I do know is that as far as the interwebs are concerned, I’m on the lookout for good—things that are beautiful and wise and helpful, things that connect us, books I think you should read, meals I think you could serve to the people you love.

You won’t find me taking shots at this or that public person ever, not because I don’t have strong opinions—I do, and anyone who knows me well knows that there’s no shortage of those strong opinions…but that’s the point: I share those strong opinions in the context of relationship, because I think that’s the healthiest place for them to be. And because I always think to myself, what if that person has a daughter?

• • •

In the last few years, I’ve been hurt by careless and unkind words about me & my books online. But way before all that, I was a pastor’s kid, and I heard people say terrible things about my parents and their friends, people who had given everything they had to do what they believed God was calling them to do. Sometimes reporters were unkind. Sometimes authors and professors were unkind. But the pastors were the worst.

I burned through my willingness to argue the rights and wrongs about how to do church when I was about eleven. I got sick of pastors taking shots at one another publicly when I was about thirteen. These days I will physically get up from a table of pastors or bloggers or anyone at all when the conversation turns to other pastors or people in public life. I had more than enough of that conversation before I could even drive.

And then the internet came along, and anyone with a laptop can insert themselves into a conversation that isn’t about them, where relationships aren’t present, and pretty soon we’re just all flinging uninformed opinions around the internet, name-calling and drawing lines in sand, hurtling arrows through cyberspace, telling ourselves that this is an important conversation.

But is it a conversation? Or is it a really easy way to air opinions you never have to back up or explain about real people with real lives and feelings and families?

Again, I have no shortage of strong opinions on the topics of the day. But I don’t think that it helps anyone for me to scream them through the bullhorn that is the internet.

Around our table we have all sorts of conversations and disagreements and differences of opinion. But we can hear each other’s voices, and we know one another’s stories. We can create a loving, kind framework to hold all the differing voices.

It’s near impossible to do that online. And so I’ve made it a policy that I don’t.

• • •

I read a book that enraged me last month. I hated it, and I would love to blab all about it. But that author is a person. And a daughter. And a friend. So I’ll use my voice to talk about the books that I do love, because there are so many of them.

There are pastors that make me bonkers. Plenty. Also politicians and musicians and writers. But again, I remind myself how it feels as a daughter or a wife or a friend when I’ve seen name of someone I love attached to someone else’s opinion about them on the internet. I think about how my stomach has dropped when I’ve seen my own name on someone else’s blog, someone telling a story that isn’t theirs to boost their traffic.

When I’ve regretted saying something on the internet, it’s never been about love. I’ve never regretting loving or encouraging or celebrating something. I have often regretted slamming or dismissing or criticizing something, because when I do that online, it’s outside of relationship, outside of shared understanding, outside of context.

I know what generates loads of blog hits. I know that controversy is currency. But I think it’s worth asking about who you’re taking down, in the hopes that your snark and wit will go viral. I think it’s worth asking about what happens over time to your insides when you decide to be a hater, when you decide to be the police of the internet, crusading for something or other.

There are enough haters. There always will be.

And right at the same time, there will always be enough beauty, enough hope, enough good, if we decide to be people who are always on the lookout for it. I want to use my voice to bring light and hope and beauty. I want to search for what’s good, and shout about that.

When I get all wound up–when someone trashes someone I love and I want to get into the fight, when I disagree so vehemently that I want to use all caps to illustrate my point, when someone’s political views make me insane, I remember my rule, that I’ve committed to love, to being a voice for love and goodness.

I’m not telling you what to do, but this is what I’ve decided: when it comes to the internet, I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Thoughts on Creating Controversy as a Blogger is a post from: Storyline Blog

What I Learned About Leadership Listening to the Nixon Tapes

Here in DC, the local C-Span radio station has been playing the Nixon tapes in the evenings. I often drive to Alexandria in the evening to let my dog swim and spend some time by the river so I get about a half hour to listen. Then, recently, I decided to listen to the ones available online. Recipients of his calls ranged from Billy Graham to Henry Kissinger. And they’re fascinating. When else will we be able to hear a sitting President talking candidly, having forgotten he was being recorded?

Anyway, what I learned first and foremost from the tapes was this: It’s dangerous to surround yourself with people who are kissing your butt. I was amazed at how many people would sit and praise the President’s speech or policy or whatever and the President simply soaked it up without being called out on potential landmines.

Of course, few people alive get more criticism than the President, so it’s not like he’s hearing oppositional positions. But I found it interesting the culture he surrounded himself with was one of mostly praise. There’s no question every President has to work not to intimidate the people around them in an effort to hear the truth. Nixon didn’t seem to do a great job with this.

There’s a point in every leader’s life when they realize their legacy depends on them letting go of their egos and taking the opinions of their opposition seriously.

That’s the problem with forcing your way and surrounding yourself with people who are afraid of you. You simply don’t get the truth.

So, the key for the rest of us is to create a culture around ourselves in which people tell the trusted truth. I like that phrase “trusted truth” because it weeds out those who have their own agendas. We really want to surround ourselves with people who care more about our collective mission than they do about either their or our egos.

And that’s a tough balance. It requires some intuition.

Here are two simple things I’ll apply to my career after listening to President Nixon:

1. I won’t surround myself with too many people who are trying to compete with me.

There’s nothing wrong with competitive people. I love them, in fact. That said, if somebody is working for me and I sense they need to run their own show, it might be time to launch them rather than have them work on my team. Often they’re caught between a sincere calling and a fear to launch into that life themselves. But that place “in between” doesn’t help anybody. Sometimes, the way to make the whole situation work is to equip them to launch something themselves then provide lots of assistance and security until they’re off the ground. You’d hope they’d have the courage to ask you for help, but often that’s simply too intimidating of a position and you have to help them through that process, allowing them to keep their integrity and live into their calling.

2. I won’t surround myself with people who won’t tell me when when my fly is down.

The folks who work for me, then, are able to tell me when I’m being an idiot or making stupid decisions without making me feel like they have an ulterior motive. I need people who are going to be critical but are able to do so without thinking of their or my ego. It’s all about the mission.

So there’s the paradox. I doubt I’ll ever perfect it, but I would consider those two ideas as guard rails for continuing to move forward in making progress toward an altruistic mission.

*You can listen to the recorded phone calls of the President here.

What I Learned About Leadership Listening to the Nixon Tapes is a post from: Storyline Blog

4 Reasons for Optimism in Today’s World

There is a lot of bad news out there. If you turn on the TV, the stories on the news describe grim economic times, a world at war, the breakdown of society, and a pending zombie apocalypse.

This type of news messes with our belief systems. More than anything it makes us afraid. Unless bomb shelters count, scared people don’t create much. They don’t create because they are pre-occupied with protecting what is closest to them. This is basic human nature.

On the contrary, people who do create are the ones filled with hope. They see the world for what it could be.

What many people don’t realize is that we live in a world with more opportunity, hope, and potential than ever before.

For some reason, we often allow the overwhelmingly good news to be fiercely overshadowed by a potent but small percentage of bad news.

Photo Credit: Loadpaper

Here are 4 Reasons For Profound Optimism In Today’s World and why NOW is the time to do something awesome:

4. Our World Is Profoundly At Peace

The world we live in is at peace — profoundly at peace. Author Steven Pinker says that we are living in the most peaceful times in human history. The richest countries of the world are not in militaristic geopolitical competition with one another. This is a historical rarity. You would have to go back hundreds of years to find a similar period of time.

With a 24-hour news cycle you can watch a bomb going off in Afghanistan or hear of a terror plot in Times Square and think we live in dangerous times. But here is the truth:

The number of people who have died as a result of war, civil war, and, yes, terrorism, is down 50% this decade from the 1990s. It is down 75% from the preceding five decades, the decades of the Cold War, and it is, of course, down 99% from the decade before that, which is World War II.

3. Economies Are Flourishing – Despite The Recent Downturn

I know, times have been tough. But think long term here. In 1980, the number of countries that were growing at 4% a year — robust growth — was around 60. By 2007, it had doubled. Even now, after the financial crisis, that number is more than 80.

Even in the current period of slow growth, the global economy as a whole will grow 10% to 20% faster this decade than it did a decade ago, and 60% faster than it did two decades ago. Seven of the ten fastest growing economies are in Africa alone. This is nothing short of incredible.

2. The Remarkable Reduction in Global Poverty

The United Nations estimates that poverty has been reduced more in the past 50 years than in the previous 500 years. And much of that reduction has taken place in the last 20 years. Life expectancy across the world has risen dramatically. We gain five hours of life expectancy every day — without even exercising! A third of all the babies born in the developed world this year will live to be one hundred.

1. The Power of Education & the Role of Women

The number of global college graduates has risen fourfold in the last 40 years for men and sevenfold for women. The empowerment of women, whether in a village in Africa or a boardroom in America, is good for the world. We can look forward to a world enriched and ennobled by women’s voices.

• • •

So what does all this mean?

It means that more than ever, these are the times for you to make a significant difference in the world.

If you live in the global north and have a college degree, you are effectively a member of the most powerful people group the world has every known.

This isn’t a time to be scared. This is a time to be bold – a time to do work that matters. A time to leverage this unique point in human history that you are privileged to be a part of.

• • •

Now, I don’t believe in the myth of progress – that just by existing, over time, human beings will eventually figure out how to solve problems and save the world. I believe, as Dr King says,

“Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of people willing to be co-workers with God.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that for centuries, God has been putting these pieces together. Despite the downturn in traditional church attendance,

I believe hundreds of millions of human beings have become co-workers with God to solve the greatest challenges of our time.

In His genius and benevolence, God uses weak-kneed, distracted, and anxious humans to achieve remarkable things in their daily lives.

God believes in this world and wants to invite you into His redemption of it. This invitation is an opportunity to impact the lives of others, change the world, and have your own heart and mind transformed as well.

Despite the darkness in our world…

Within every tiny glimmer of hope is the hand of God clasped in partnership with the hands of human beings.

How exciting that we get to participate in this.

As Gary Haugen notes,

“The almighty God of the universe is prepared to use us, his people, to seek justice, to rescue the oppressed, to defend the orphan and to plead for the widow. How? By using the gifts, resources, relationships, expertise, and power that he has given us. Because the reason he has granted us these things is not merely for our joy (though great joy they rightly bring) but so that we might serve those who lack them.”

Despite the bad news you see on TV, good is winning in the world. And you have a chance to be a part of the team. The team of light and the team of hope.

• • •

Will you do something for me?

In the comments below, how does this news make you feel? Do you believe it? If not, why? What’s your role in all of this?

*Borrowed in parts from Fareed Zakaria’s 2012 Harvard Commencement Address

4 Reasons for Optimism in Today’s World is a post from: Storyline Blog

Choosing to Be Lonely Over a Bad Relationship is Radical Self-Respect

I caught the movie The Way Way Back this weekend and enjoyed it. It’s one of those art-house films that stands up and makes you wish some of these movies had larger marketing budgets.

The film is really about a kid’s coming of age, his realization that life and love aren’t perfect, and his subtle encouragement to his mom to not settle.

That theme gives this movie the feel of an anti-love story. Not to say it’s against love, but it’s about one of those tough relationships in which needy people pair up and try to make dysfunction work. That’s often a beautiful story unless one of the people is breaking the rules. And in this movie one of them is.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you feel like you’re settling, and by settling I mean looking the other way while secretly wondering if you deserve somebody who can actually be faithful or have respect for you, you might find some comfort in this film. Comfort and direction.

I don’t like the word settling as much as I like the word commitment. I’d never recommend to anybody that they settle.

When we commit to somebody, through thick and thin, we’re giving them the gift of our undivided, safe and trusting love, and the price for that is the same in return. If both parties aren’t fully committed, the couple isn’t compatible.

I liked this movie. It’s subtle and simple and at times, fun. But in our age of dysfunctional families and confusion about the nature of love, it has a thoughtful message: Committed people deserve committed people and really aren’t compatible with anybody else.

Anyway, I hope you get to see it.

If you’ve already seen it, what’d you think?

Choosing to Be Lonely Over a Bad Relationship is Radical Self-Respect is a post from: Storyline Blog

Sunday Morning Sermon: Richard Rohr on the Most Diminished Way to View the Bible

I’ve serious problems with very modern theologians who view all of scripture literally. My problem is that the Bible is not so simple of a book, and to understand it literally is to simplify it. It’s a con game for people who don’t like the fact they can’t understand it all. Richard Rohr asks, “What if the Bible is authoritative and alive and transformative but not full of simple thoughts that are easy to categorize?” Essentially he’s asking, “Does the Bible have authority and it controls me, or I have authority and I control it?”

Good thoughts for a Sunday morning.

Sunday Morning Sermon: Richard Rohr on the Most Diminished Way to View the Bible is a post from: Storyline Blog

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week

Our winner last week was the Tiny House video. What about this week? Vote for your favorite below in the comments.

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog

What if Being “Content” is Ruining Your Life?

What if the biggest thing getting in the way of the life you want to live, and maybe even the life you were made to live, is the sense that what you have is “good enough”? What if being “content” is ruining your story?

About five years ago, I started feeling restless.

I had been out of grad school for almost two years, and was working a full-time job that paid well. I lived in a great apartment with a dear friend who loved to run and cook and entertain as much as I did, and our co-existence was pleasant and easy. My family lived close and I would often join my parents for dinner or meet my sister for coffee or pedicures or shopping. I had everything I needed and then some.

So I felt a searing guilt every time I allowed myself to feel the way I was really feeling — like this wasn’t what I wanted.

Each time the feeling came up, I would push it back down, reasoning with myself that people were desperate for jobs like mine, for cars like mine, for lives like mine. Stop complaining and just be thankful, I would tell myself silently, which would help make it through a few more days or weeks before the feeling would come up again, and the cycle would continue.

I never considered my discontent might be trying to tell me something.

I was talking to a dear friend the other day and she was telling me about how she’s been thinking of moving on from her “good enough” job for a long time. She’s been feeling underwhelmed about it, like it doesn’t challenge her the way she wishes it would, and like there is something better out there for her. But before she could even finish saying the thought out loud, she started backpedaling.

“I shouldn’t complain,” she said. “I have a good job and it affords me all kinds of luxuries I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

What is it that makes us feel so guilty for wanting something better?

For me, as a Christian, there is always this pressing reminder I’m supposed to be “content in all circumstances” (Philippians 4:12) and a fear that my inability to do so reflects some sort of moral or spiritual failure. If I just read my Bible more, or prayed more, or was more disciplined with my thought life, I wouldn’t have such a hard time being content. That’s what I tell myself.

And so I drag myself through life, stomping out desire every time it tries to rear its ugly head, but the more I do that, the more numb I feel, and the more I question how on earth this could be the “abundant life” Jesus promised.

Is there any chance being “content” doesn’t look like we think it does?

My sense this is the case comes from personal experience. A few years back, while I was living comfortable life I was describing above, I was reading through the gospels and was captured in a whole new way by the story of the Rich Young Ruler, a story I had read a hundred times before. A wealthy man comes to Jesus and asks, “What can I do to experience the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus tells him to go and sell all of his stuff, and give the money away to the poor.

My whole life I had read this story as a nice analogy for what happens when rich people forget they need God. But I hadn’t ever considered I might be the rich person, hadn’t thought about how I might be too attached to my stuff, and hadn’t never pondered, even for a second, that Jesus would ever ask me to literally give anything away.

But as I read I was moved by how Jesus never tried to deter the Young Man from wanting what he wanted (The Kingdom of Heaven); he just assured him that, in order to get it, he was going to have to give up everything.

So, I decided to take the story literally.

I quit my job, moved out of my apartment, sold all of my stuff, and spent the next few years of my life chasing what I wanted, going without the luxuries I used to enjoy. I wrote a whole book about my experience, so it’s a lot to explain in single blog post, but the thing that confounded me most about the whole thing was how choosing to admit my life was not “good enough” was the path that ultimately led me to contentment.

In fact, it wasn’t until I finally started to admit I didn’t have what I really wanted, until I let go of the many things that were getting in my way, that I began to understand what Paul really meant when he said: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” (Philippians 4:12)

• First of all, being content didn’t mean I never wanted anything. In fact, just the opposite. It meant admitting the fullness of my desire, and offering it up as a sacrifice, along with all of my physical stuff.

• Second, I learned my physical stuff was not disconnected from my spiritual and emotional life. We can’t hang on to very many things at once (we only have two hands) and having too many physical possessions was literally keeping me from enjoying the spiritual blessings I craved.

• Third, I learned to pay close attention to the things I wanted, because they were always telling me something. As long as I was willing to ask myself why I wanted what I wanted, my wants were very useful. I usually found what I really wanted, buried miles beneath the surface (often I discovered I already had it, or had access to it).

• Finally, I learned that trying to be “content” by talking myself out of wanting things I wanted was a fruitless effort, like trying to get a beach ball to disappear by holding it under the surface of water. It works for awhile, but the minute you let go, or quit paying attention, it comes the surface with force.

When you look up “content” in the dictionary, the first definition reads, “desiring no more than what one has, satisfied.” But the second definition reads, “ready to accept or acquiesce, willing.” And for me, this is a more helpful definition of what it looks like to be content in all of my circumstances.

My life is not “good enough.” It never will be until I get to heaven. But I am ready to accept what comes to me, to acquiesce, to give up things that won’t satisfy me forever because I know there is one thing that will.

What if Being “Content” is Ruining Your Life? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Why I Don’t Believe We Know the Truth Yet

I get into social tension sometimes when people try to trick me into saying I don’t believe in truth. Of course that’s not true. I do believe in truth, I just haven’t found anybody, apart from Jesus, who represents it absolutely. And we’d all have to agree that while Jesus was truth and represented truth He didn’t articulate it in a way it could be measured and tested and proved.

Truth is bigger than words and too large to be stuffed into a tiny human mind. Otherwise, let’s be honest, truth isn’t very interesting.

There are all kinds of truth. It’s true I’m sitting on a couch writing this blog, for instance. That’s an absolute truth. And then there’s contextual truth, such as thou shalt not kill, unless of course you believe in the death penalty.

Let’s not pretend truth is always fixed. It’s often fluid.

I recently sat next to a physicist at a dinner and in small talk he found out I was a Christian writer. He immediately gruffed. He said he’d little regard for Christianity because Christians are always calling things true that aren’t. What he meant was in his discipline, he had to submit the concept of truth to verified tests and data while we could just use the term as willy nilly as an anchor on Fox News.

I agreed with my new friend that many of the things Christians believe are true are simply not verifiable. We can not verify the Bible is true, for instance, and yet within the Bible itself truth is poetically rather than specifically defined. Jesus says I am truth, which is no scientific definition.

*Photo by Curious District, Creative Commons

That said, however, I like something Albert Einstein said, he said, “Gravitation is not responsible for falling in love,” and I think he’s right. I suspect what he means is there’s something more, something neither the theologian or the physicist can explain.

Do I believe in absolute truth? I do.

Do I believe we can know what absolute truth is? Yes, but only some of it.

Why? Because some of it is too big and we aren’t capable of understanding it.

Am I comfortable with that? Yes, I’m as comfortable as a child with his father, knowing half the things I believe are fiction and half are true and the majority of what is isn’t in my head at all. But He’s around all the same. And He is truth.

And that’s nothing anybody can prove.

Why I Don’t Believe We Know the Truth Yet is a post from: Storyline Blog