Dr. Doug Groothuis' recommended reading lists!
Francis Schaeffer
2. Os Guinness
3. Bernard Ramm
4. Blaise Pascal
5. (Some of ) Soren Kierkegaard: Purity of Heart and The Sickness Unto Death. I do not accept this fideism.
... 6. R.J. Rushoony
7. Jacques Ellul
8. John Stott
9. J.P. Moreland
10. Alvin Plantinga
11. GK Chesterton
12. Carl Henry
13. Walter Martin
14. Gordon Lewis
15. William Dembski
16. Bill Craig
Liberal or non-Christian writers
1. Peter Berger
2. Neil Postman
3. Victor Frankl
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Six Secrets to Creating a Culture of Innovation
When IBM recently polled 1500 CEOs across 60 countries, they rated creativity as the most important leadership competency. Eighty percent of the CEOs said the business environment is growing so complex that it literally demands new ways of thinking. Less than 50 percent said they believed their organizations were equipped to deal effectively with this rising complexity. But are CEOs and senior leaders really willing to make the transformational moves necessary to foster cultures of real creativity and innovation? Here are the six fundamental moves we believe they must make. In all my travels, I've not yet come across a single company that systematically does even the majority of them, much less every one.
1. Meet People's Needs. Recognize that questioning orthodoxy and convention — the key to creativity — begins with questioning the way people are expected to work. How well are their core needs — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — being met in the workplace? The more people are preoccupied by unmet needs, the less energy and engagement they bring to their work. Begin by asking employees, one at a time, what they need to perform at their best. Next, define what success looks like and hold people accountable to specific metrics, but as much as possible, let them design their days as they see fit to achieve those outcomes.
2. Teach Creativity Systematically. It isn't magical and it can be developed. There are five well-defined, widely accepted stages of creative thinking: first insight, saturation, incubation, illumination, and verification. They don't always unfold predictably, but they do provide a roadmap for enlisting the whole brain, moving back and forth between analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking, and more pattern-seeking, big-picture, right hemisphere thinking. The best description of the stages I've come across is in Betty Edward's book Drawing on the Artist Within. The best understanding of the role of the right hemisphere, and how to cultivate it, is in Edwards' first book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
3. Nurture Passion. The quickest way to kill creativity is to put people in roles that don't excite their imagination. This begins at an early age. Kids who are encouraged to follow their passion develop better discipline, deeper knowledge, and are more persevering and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Look for small ways to give employees, at every level, the opportunity and encouragement to follow their interests and express their unique talents.
4. Make the Work Matter. Human beings are meaning-making animals. Money pays the bills but it's a thin source of meaning. We feel better about ourselves when we we're making a positive contribution to something beyond ourselves. To feel truly motivated, we have to believe what we're doing really matters. When leaders can define a compelling mission that transcends each individual's self-interest, it's a source of fuel not just for higher performance, but also for thinking more creatively about how to overcome obstacles and generate new solutions.
5. Provide the Time. Creative thinking requires relatively open-ended, uninterrupted time, free of pressure for immediate answers and instant solutions. Time is a scarce, overburdened commodity in organizations that live by the ethic of "more, bigger, faster." Ironically, the best way to insure that innovation gets attention is to schedule sacrosanct time for it, on a regular basis.
6. Value Renewal. Human beings are not meant to operate continuously the way computers do. We're designed to expend energy for relatively short periods of time — no more than 90 minutes — and then recover. The third stage of the creative process, incubation, occurs when we step away from a problem we're trying to solve and let our unconscious work on it. It's effective to go on a walk, or listen to music, or quiet the mind by meditating, or even take a drive. Movement — especially exercise that raises the heart rate — is another powerful way to induce the sort of shift in consciousness in which creative breakthroughs spontaneously arise. These activities are only possible in a workplace that doesn't overvalue face time and undervalue the power of renewal.
Tony Schwartz is president and CEO of The Energy Project. He is the author of the June, 2010 HBR article, "The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less," and coauthor, with Catherine McCarthy, of the 2007 HBR article, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time." Tony is also the author of the new book "The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance" (Free Press, 2010).
1. Meet People's Needs. Recognize that questioning orthodoxy and convention — the key to creativity — begins with questioning the way people are expected to work. How well are their core needs — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — being met in the workplace? The more people are preoccupied by unmet needs, the less energy and engagement they bring to their work. Begin by asking employees, one at a time, what they need to perform at their best. Next, define what success looks like and hold people accountable to specific metrics, but as much as possible, let them design their days as they see fit to achieve those outcomes.
2. Teach Creativity Systematically. It isn't magical and it can be developed. There are five well-defined, widely accepted stages of creative thinking: first insight, saturation, incubation, illumination, and verification. They don't always unfold predictably, but they do provide a roadmap for enlisting the whole brain, moving back and forth between analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking, and more pattern-seeking, big-picture, right hemisphere thinking. The best description of the stages I've come across is in Betty Edward's book Drawing on the Artist Within. The best understanding of the role of the right hemisphere, and how to cultivate it, is in Edwards' first book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
3. Nurture Passion. The quickest way to kill creativity is to put people in roles that don't excite their imagination. This begins at an early age. Kids who are encouraged to follow their passion develop better discipline, deeper knowledge, and are more persevering and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Look for small ways to give employees, at every level, the opportunity and encouragement to follow their interests and express their unique talents.
4. Make the Work Matter. Human beings are meaning-making animals. Money pays the bills but it's a thin source of meaning. We feel better about ourselves when we we're making a positive contribution to something beyond ourselves. To feel truly motivated, we have to believe what we're doing really matters. When leaders can define a compelling mission that transcends each individual's self-interest, it's a source of fuel not just for higher performance, but also for thinking more creatively about how to overcome obstacles and generate new solutions.
5. Provide the Time. Creative thinking requires relatively open-ended, uninterrupted time, free of pressure for immediate answers and instant solutions. Time is a scarce, overburdened commodity in organizations that live by the ethic of "more, bigger, faster." Ironically, the best way to insure that innovation gets attention is to schedule sacrosanct time for it, on a regular basis.
6. Value Renewal. Human beings are not meant to operate continuously the way computers do. We're designed to expend energy for relatively short periods of time — no more than 90 minutes — and then recover. The third stage of the creative process, incubation, occurs when we step away from a problem we're trying to solve and let our unconscious work on it. It's effective to go on a walk, or listen to music, or quiet the mind by meditating, or even take a drive. Movement — especially exercise that raises the heart rate — is another powerful way to induce the sort of shift in consciousness in which creative breakthroughs spontaneously arise. These activities are only possible in a workplace that doesn't overvalue face time and undervalue the power of renewal.
Tony Schwartz is president and CEO of The Energy Project. He is the author of the June, 2010 HBR article, "The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less," and coauthor, with Catherine McCarthy, of the 2007 HBR article, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time." Tony is also the author of the new book "The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance" (Free Press, 2010).
Bound To Christ's Love in the Context of the Cross
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? it is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:28-39 ESV)
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? it is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:28-39 ESV)
Saturday, April 7, 2012
A Royal Ruin, by Dr. Doug Groothuis
Is it possible to reconcile mankind's dueling capacities for debauchery and greatness?
As Dr. Doug Groothuis explains, Pascal saw the Christian worldview as the only plausible explanation for this inner conflict that plagues the human race.Introspection:
Mankind's SpecialtyThe Bible is God's anthropology rather than man's theology.— Abraham Joshua Heschel [1]We humans often puzzle over our own humanity, scanning our heights and our depths, wondering about and worrying over the meaning of our good and our evil. No other animal reflects on its species like this. Here, and in so many other ways, we stand unique among living creatures. Why does a young student go on a homicidal rampage at Virginia Tech, murdering dozens of innocent people and then killing himself? Why does such evil strike so hard and so erratically?
In spite of these upsurges of human evil, we are also struck by the beauty, courage and genius wrought by human minds, hearts and hands. After every tragedy (on September 11, 2001 or at Virginia Tech), heroes emerge who rescue the living, comfort the dying, and put others above themselves in spontaneous acts of altruism.Singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn ponders the complexities and contradictions of humanity in "The Burden of the Angel/Beast" — the distinctively human discomfort with being human and not understanding the origin and meaning of our own humanness:What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe! [2]Yet this was no mere marveling. Any worldview worth its rational salt needs to offer a sufficient explanation for both human greatness and debauchery.
Pascal goes on: "Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness." [3]Pascal believed the answers were found in the Bible. We find greatness in humanity because we are made in the divine image (Genesis 1:27). However, that image has been defaced (but not erased) through the fall (Genesis 3; Romans 3). There is something wrong with every aspect of our being, but we remain noble in our origin. There are, to invoke Cockburn again, "rumors of glory" found in humanity.
From the greatness and wretchedness of humanity, Pascal developed an argument for the truth and rationality of Christianity. While his ingenious argument has been reconstructed in more detail elsewhere, [4] we will consider its basic structure, which provides a fruitful point of discussion with seeking and questioning people today.
Two Extremes
The genius of the Christian perspective is that it explains both greatness and misery without exalting one above the other. Our nobility, expressed in the achievements of thought, for example, is due to our divine image. Because of this, we transcend the rest of creation. Yet we abuse our greatest endowments, wasting our God-given skills on trivia and diversions, because we know we will die and do not know what to do about it. We are the corruption of a former original. Pascal says:The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and felicity, and, if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea either of truth or bliss. But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition) we have an idea of happiness but we cannot attain it. We perceive an image of the truth and possess nothing but falsehood. [5]In other words, we are royal ruins: We possess some truth, but we cannot rest content in what we naturally know; we feel our own corruption, and in so doing, we realize the human condition is somehow abnormal, flawed and degenerate. In the context of surveying human greatness and misery in many dimensions of life, Pascal says: "It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king." [6]
In surveying human philosophies and non-Christian religions, Pascal notes that they either exalt humans at the expense of taking seriously their weaknesses or reduce humans to nothing at the expense of their significance. In Pascal's day, many were impressed by the philosophy of the Stoics, who asserted that humans were great in reason and courage and partook of the divine essence of the universe. Yet these Stoics made little allowance for human weakness, cruelty, uncertainty and fragility. Thus, they exalted greatness at the expense of misery.On the other hand, various skeptics, such as Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), delighted in showing the weakness of human reason and the arrogance of our pretensions. Yet the skeptics downplayed our ability to reason properly and the significance of human achievements in science, art and elsewhere. As Pascal said, they should have been more skeptical of their skepticism. [7]The New Spirituality, India's Caste SystemWhile the specific writers that Pascal addressed are not commonly discussed today, the tendency either to overrate or underrate humanity is still with us. Many examples abound, but I will briefly inspect one worldview that overrates humanity: the New Spirituality. [8]The New Spirituality is an amalgamation of ideas drawn from many sources. But whether it is the best-selling book, The Secret (hawked by Oprah Winfrey), or the movie, What the Bleep Do We (K)now!?, the New Spirituality claims we are divine beings who can tap into unlimited potential through a change in consciousness. (In this way, it is similar to Stoicism.) We are limited not by our sinful condition, but only by negative thought patterns. The "secret" of The Secret is "the law of attraction" — we attract good things to ourselves through positive thoughts and negative things to ourselves through negative thoughts.This blind optimism and inflation of human abilities appeals to our pride and the American "can-do" attitude, but it is radically out of alignment with reality. Yes, humans achieve much of what they conceive, but there are limits. Thought does not create reality ex nihilo. Moreover, humans inflict evil on others willfully and repeatedly. We cannot explain this away on the basis of the negative thoughts of those who are victimized.Consider the untouchables (or Dalits) of India. Their 3,000 years of subjugation by the upper Hindu castes cannot be explained on the basis of low self-esteem among the Dalits. That would be to blame the victim unjustly. Rather, human beings, given their fallen propensity to exalt themselves over others artificially, have unjustly oppressed fellow imagebearers of God for three millennia. "Man's inhumanity to man" is a fact of human history, in India and everywhere else under the sun. Even a "royal ruin" should be able to see that and search for an answer.Finding a Balance:
The Christian Perspective
But the Christian worldview conserves both our greatness and our wretchedness in a profound revelation, something not available to unaided human reason, as Pascal points out:Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God. [9]The biblical account of our creation and fall best fits the facts of human reality. However, we must "listen to God" — that is, attend to what God has spoken in the Bible — to discover this liberating truth.Pascal further counsels us that the biblical account reveals that there is a Redeemer for royal ruins — Himself, a King, who became a man in order to rescue those who are "east of Eden" and standing at the brink of eternity. Pascal says that in Him we find hope for our deposed condition: "Jesus is a God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair." [10]Though we are royal ruins, we can find total forgiveness, redemption and eternal life through the one who truly understands our condition. (See John 3:16-18; 10:10; and Romans 5:1-8.) [11]Copyright © 2007 Douglas Groothuis. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
As Dr. Doug Groothuis explains, Pascal saw the Christian worldview as the only plausible explanation for this inner conflict that plagues the human race.Introspection:
Mankind's SpecialtyThe Bible is God's anthropology rather than man's theology.— Abraham Joshua Heschel [1]We humans often puzzle over our own humanity, scanning our heights and our depths, wondering about and worrying over the meaning of our good and our evil. No other animal reflects on its species like this. Here, and in so many other ways, we stand unique among living creatures. Why does a young student go on a homicidal rampage at Virginia Tech, murdering dozens of innocent people and then killing himself? Why does such evil strike so hard and so erratically?
In spite of these upsurges of human evil, we are also struck by the beauty, courage and genius wrought by human minds, hearts and hands. After every tragedy (on September 11, 2001 or at Virginia Tech), heroes emerge who rescue the living, comfort the dying, and put others above themselves in spontaneous acts of altruism.Singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn ponders the complexities and contradictions of humanity in "The Burden of the Angel/Beast" — the distinctively human discomfort with being human and not understanding the origin and meaning of our own humanness:What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe! [2]Yet this was no mere marveling. Any worldview worth its rational salt needs to offer a sufficient explanation for both human greatness and debauchery.
Pascal goes on: "Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness." [3]Pascal believed the answers were found in the Bible. We find greatness in humanity because we are made in the divine image (Genesis 1:27). However, that image has been defaced (but not erased) through the fall (Genesis 3; Romans 3). There is something wrong with every aspect of our being, but we remain noble in our origin. There are, to invoke Cockburn again, "rumors of glory" found in humanity.
From the greatness and wretchedness of humanity, Pascal developed an argument for the truth and rationality of Christianity. While his ingenious argument has been reconstructed in more detail elsewhere, [4] we will consider its basic structure, which provides a fruitful point of discussion with seeking and questioning people today.
Two Extremes
The genius of the Christian perspective is that it explains both greatness and misery without exalting one above the other. Our nobility, expressed in the achievements of thought, for example, is due to our divine image. Because of this, we transcend the rest of creation. Yet we abuse our greatest endowments, wasting our God-given skills on trivia and diversions, because we know we will die and do not know what to do about it. We are the corruption of a former original. Pascal says:The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and felicity, and, if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea either of truth or bliss. But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition) we have an idea of happiness but we cannot attain it. We perceive an image of the truth and possess nothing but falsehood. [5]In other words, we are royal ruins: We possess some truth, but we cannot rest content in what we naturally know; we feel our own corruption, and in so doing, we realize the human condition is somehow abnormal, flawed and degenerate. In the context of surveying human greatness and misery in many dimensions of life, Pascal says: "It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king." [6]
In surveying human philosophies and non-Christian religions, Pascal notes that they either exalt humans at the expense of taking seriously their weaknesses or reduce humans to nothing at the expense of their significance. In Pascal's day, many were impressed by the philosophy of the Stoics, who asserted that humans were great in reason and courage and partook of the divine essence of the universe. Yet these Stoics made little allowance for human weakness, cruelty, uncertainty and fragility. Thus, they exalted greatness at the expense of misery.On the other hand, various skeptics, such as Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), delighted in showing the weakness of human reason and the arrogance of our pretensions. Yet the skeptics downplayed our ability to reason properly and the significance of human achievements in science, art and elsewhere. As Pascal said, they should have been more skeptical of their skepticism. [7]The New Spirituality, India's Caste SystemWhile the specific writers that Pascal addressed are not commonly discussed today, the tendency either to overrate or underrate humanity is still with us. Many examples abound, but I will briefly inspect one worldview that overrates humanity: the New Spirituality. [8]The New Spirituality is an amalgamation of ideas drawn from many sources. But whether it is the best-selling book, The Secret (hawked by Oprah Winfrey), or the movie, What the Bleep Do We (K)now!?, the New Spirituality claims we are divine beings who can tap into unlimited potential through a change in consciousness. (In this way, it is similar to Stoicism.) We are limited not by our sinful condition, but only by negative thought patterns. The "secret" of The Secret is "the law of attraction" — we attract good things to ourselves through positive thoughts and negative things to ourselves through negative thoughts.This blind optimism and inflation of human abilities appeals to our pride and the American "can-do" attitude, but it is radically out of alignment with reality. Yes, humans achieve much of what they conceive, but there are limits. Thought does not create reality ex nihilo. Moreover, humans inflict evil on others willfully and repeatedly. We cannot explain this away on the basis of the negative thoughts of those who are victimized.Consider the untouchables (or Dalits) of India. Their 3,000 years of subjugation by the upper Hindu castes cannot be explained on the basis of low self-esteem among the Dalits. That would be to blame the victim unjustly. Rather, human beings, given their fallen propensity to exalt themselves over others artificially, have unjustly oppressed fellow imagebearers of God for three millennia. "Man's inhumanity to man" is a fact of human history, in India and everywhere else under the sun. Even a "royal ruin" should be able to see that and search for an answer.Finding a Balance:
The Christian Perspective
But the Christian worldview conserves both our greatness and our wretchedness in a profound revelation, something not available to unaided human reason, as Pascal points out:Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God. [9]The biblical account of our creation and fall best fits the facts of human reality. However, we must "listen to God" — that is, attend to what God has spoken in the Bible — to discover this liberating truth.Pascal further counsels us that the biblical account reveals that there is a Redeemer for royal ruins — Himself, a King, who became a man in order to rescue those who are "east of Eden" and standing at the brink of eternity. Pascal says that in Him we find hope for our deposed condition: "Jesus is a God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair." [10]Though we are royal ruins, we can find total forgiveness, redemption and eternal life through the one who truly understands our condition. (See John 3:16-18; 10:10; and Romans 5:1-8.) [11]Copyright © 2007 Douglas Groothuis. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear
the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all
conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at
hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast
image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert
sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank
and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about
it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of
stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what
rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to
be born?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear
the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all
conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at
hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast
image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert
sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank
and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about
it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of
stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what
rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to
be born?
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