A few years ago I had a boss who told me, “You don’t need to learn anymore. You know what you need. Now you just need to do.”
It was a compelling thought. A hopeful thought. It was also an utterly terrifying thought because I couldn’t have felt farther from knowing anything about anything.
Steve - I’ve mentioned him before - had gone through his own crucible. He’d built up a company with his brother, and because of some disagreement or another, he was ejected from his company and “lost everything,” as he told me. Millions of dollars, allegedly. He had been about the same age that I am now, and he was faced with starting over. He had all the accoutrements of man his age - wife, kids, mortgage, etc.
He’d gone through his own wanderjahr, starting emergency triage companies only to abandon them. Eventually he landed at a company that he’d helped to found two decades before, and by that point he was ready to rock & roll. And rock & roll he did. He created a position for himself, grabbed the company’s operations by the throat, and increased revenue from $5 million annually to about $30 million in about five years.
Inspiring, to say the least.
So, when this guy, whose advice included such gems as, “I need you to stop being a [pansy],” (he didn’t say “pansy”) and, “You need to learn how to make grown men cry,” took me out to lunch for a pep talk, I was all ears. After all, this was only a couple of months after the company I’d been building for a decade collapsed faster than a Soviet-made nuclear reactor. I needed more than direction - I needed light.
I remembered that lunch with Steve the other day when I was choosing which book I’d bring to work. I almost never read books on my lunch because they give me only 30 minutes for it, and I haaaaate being pulled away from a good book. Nonetheless, I was trying to pick one, and it came down to these two:
I almost hate to put these two in the same frame together. Why? Because:
One is holy, the other is crass.
One tells me that nothing matters more than peace among men, the other tells me that you have to cut all the haters out of your life.
One book tells me that “The Lord is present everywhere, and nothing happens without His will or His permission,” and the other tells me, “We feel we are above the tasks coming our way and that the world, or God, or the fates have sentenced us to live in a box we do not belong in.”
Both were recommendations by people I admire for various reasons. Neither book seems to have ALL the answers to “life, the universe, and everything,” but both have a lot of good to say. They seem to be the two most “binary” books I own; as in, as in they’re the farthest apart as they can be while still existing in the same category, however tenuously. (I hesitate to put Elder Thaddeus’ book in the “self-improvement category). They both represent particular, and apparently diametrically opposed, worldviews.
I am the tennis ball whacked back and forth between them.
I know a few guys who seem to have found balance between these two poles. There’s this one guy back in VA who is genuinely, authentically, almost painfully kind and gentle, but he “has it all:” a lovely wife, beautiful and brilliant children, and a well-paying career at the one federal alphabet agency I’d actually love to work for. You might think, as per so much propaganda in our culture, that such sublime perfection is just what we see on the surface. He’s really a serial killer, right? He and his wife lure people to their subterranean torture chamber in the basement. They must, right?
No. I’ve seen their basement. It’s well-lit and a homeschooler’s paradise. A little Montessori, a little Charlotte Mason. No TVs.
Did I mention his beard? He has a mighty beard. Maybe that’s the secret.
Another guy I know: he has about a hundred kids, travels the country every week, writes books, and raises funds to actually build an authentic culture of liberty and prosperity. His wife supports his work and, as far as I can tell, is happy. Beard status: None.
A third guy: Again with the kids - five or six or nine, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell when there are so many. We’ll just say [~] kids. He’s a quiet man, but lethally intelligent and effective. I won’t comment on his work because he’s fairly high level in the DC world. Their home is a warm and gorgeous place, and frequently filled with other families because they love to entertain. No beard.
Envious? Absolutely not. But also, yes. There seem to be two conclusions one can draw from these vignettes: There appears to be a correlation between success and large families. Also, one’s beard status is largely irrelevant.
Seriously, though, they’re all men of faith, and they’re all successful in the world. I doubt any of them have Goggins’ book in their libraries. (This daddy needs to hide some of his self-improvement books because of all the naughty words). It’s all St. Thomas Aquinas and Bible studies. In other words, they don’t seem to be fans of the self-improvement sphere, and they don’t need to be. They’ve got this.
Does that mean that faith is all you need? Clearly not, because I know ten times as many faithful men going through some kind of personal or marital implosion. I know even more who’ve just made peace with pain and struggle and secretly hope death isn’t delayed.
So, whack. Back and forth I go. Hustle or faith, hustle or faith…
I can almost hear the laments of certain few readers of this blog from around the country. “That’s a false dichotomy, you idiot! Peace, brother…”
Yes, it probably is, but here’s where it gets me: I know I need to surrender my will to God’s. I know that nurturing humility is a lifelong project. I know that Christianity values meekness. The ideal Christian man doesn’t seek fame, success, riches. He is grateful for what he’s been given and seeks no more than to hear the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
But…there’s that whole “provider” part. We might say that a man has a few core responsibilities, and one of them is to provide for his family. And as this world swirls a little farther down he bowl every year, it takes a certain level of resources to keep one’s family safe from the toxic cloud of “culture” all around us.
Homeschooling is a good example. Millions of parents are coming to the conclusion that they can best protect - and educate - their children in their own homes. But that takes a whole level of commitment of time and money that the public school norm doesn’t. Right there, they may have to decide to live on one income, which in itself is increasingly difficult. They have to buy their own books and materials. And more often than not, homeschooling isn’t simply teaching the kids around the dining room table, it’s even more social, educational, and physical activities. Mom definitely needs a vehicle to get the kids to all their things.
You need a sufficiently sized home and all the costs associated with that. Two car payments. Then there are the tutors, instructors, lessons…
And then, at the end of the day, mom is exhausted, especially if she’s trying to keep up with all of the normal, everyday household chores. Dad may or may not cook (hey, you can’t all be me. ;-)), so he’ll often either order out or take the family out for dinner. More often than not, however, that’s a luxury. (But if a necessary luxury, one might say, if you want marital and domestic tranquility…)
This is all crushingly expensive. The father. Must. Provide.
(Shout out to the notable exceptions who make the opposite work.)
As far as I can tell, to “rise above” one’s professional level, to level up, a guy needs to be aggressive, confident, strong, thick-skinned, and at times, confrontational. Not in a belligerent sort of way, although sometimes, yes. I’ve been there - the weak-faithed Christian trying to see Jesus in everyone, even the guy standing nose-to-nose with me, literally threatening to kill me because I had this quaint policy about my drivers and sobriety… Let me tell you - “turning the other cheek” isn’t always an option. You have to be ready to skin that smoke wagon.
And all that seems to be squarely at odds with the Christian ideal, at least as I understand it.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I can tell you that I haven’t just been theorizing about it. For nearly two decades I’ve been trying to harmonize the Hustle and the Faith. The one point of clarity in all this mess?
As always, it’s action. Action born of grit, conviction, and for me, at least, hostility toward what the world tells me I should believe, do, or even be. The most overwhelming times are the ones in which I’m passive, back on my heels, flailing and trying not to take one on the jaw. (I always seem to leave my groin open, though…) But when I’m advancing? Well, things seem to fall into place QUITE nicely.
At least until the next hour’s battle. ;-)
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It “struck” me as I read this post that there really is no such thing as self-help. It’s impossible to help oneself without God and Divine Grace. The realization has stopped me in my tracks as I try to advance in the journey. Thank you for being an instrument of grace today.
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The ideal Christian man doesn’t seek fame, success, riches.
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I think you’re almost right, but the ideal Christian man can seek fame, success, and/or riches—as long as he seeks them for the love and glory of God. If he is attached to them, they are a temptation to pride and terrible vices, but it is not so for the man who regards them with holy indifference and would be prepared to lose them all in an instant.
I sometimes think of the fact that Jesus put no conditions of surrendering his position on the centurion.
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As far as I can tell, to ‘rise above’ one’s professional level, to level up, a guy needs to be aggressive, confident, strong, thick-skinned, and at times, confrontational. . . . And all that seems to be squarely at odds with the Christian ideal, at least as I understand it.
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I’m about a generation younger than you, so I’m only starting to find my way in the professional “real world,” but I am discovering—to the dismay of my younger self who wanted nothing more than to turn the other cheek at every opportunity—the first part to be rather true. Being a ‘nice guy’ made a lot of people like me, but it didn’t get me far in my career.
But I’m not sure how opposed to the Christian ideal those qualities really are, at least if we look at Christ as the exemplar of the Christian ideal. When he fashioned a whip of cords and drove the money changers from the Temple, he was aggressive, confident, strong, thick-skinned, and undoubtedly confrontational.
Somehow, I think, we don’t take seriously enough Jesus’ commands to “make friends with the mammon of iniquity” and to “be shrewd as serpents.”