I recently finished reading the challenging book The Call by Os Guinness. In the last chapter, Guinness outlines how the calling that God has given us is a journey, but it is a journey on a path to a final destination.
Here is what he says:
"The truth of calling is as vital to our ending as to our beginning. It is an important key to finishing well because it helps us with three of the greatest challenges of our last years of life. First, calling is the spur that keeps us journeying purposefully— and thus growing and maturing—to the very end of our lives.
People make two equal but opposite errors about life as a journey and faith as the Way. On one side, usually at the less educated level, are those who prematurely speak as if they have arrived. Such people properly emphasize the certainties and triumphs of faith but minimize the uncertainties, tragedies, and incompletenesses. Having come to faith, they speak and live as if they have nothing more to learn. All truths are clear-cut, all mysteries solved, all hopes materialized, all conclusion foregone—and all sense of journeying is reduced to the vanishing point. There are seemingly no risks, trials, dangers, setbacks, or disasters on the horizon. Or so they seem to talk.
On the other side, usually at the more educated level, are those who are so conscious of the journey that journey without end becomes their passion and their way of life. To such people it is unthinkable ever to arrive, and the ultimate gaffe is the claim of finding a way or reaching a conclusion. Like the perennial seekers we met earlier, for them the journey itself is all. Questions, inquiry, searching, and conquering become an end in themselves. Ambiguity is everything.
Yet the Christian faith has an extraordinary balance between these extremes. As those responding to God’s call, we are followers of Christ and followers of the Way. So we are on a journey and we are truly travelers, with all the attendant costs, risks, and dangers of the journey. Never in this life can we say we have arrived. But we know why we have lost our original home and, more importantly, we know the home to which we are going.
So we who are followers of Christ are wayfarers, and though we have found the Way, we have not yet come to our destination. We may retire from our jobs, but there is no retiring from our individual callings. We may cut back from our public responsibilities, but there is no cutting back from our corporate calling as the people of God. Above all, we may reach the place where we can see the end of the road, but our eyes are then to be fixed more closely on the one at the end of the road who is Father and home. As Henri Nouwen wrote, “He who thinks that he has finished is finished. Those who think they have arrived have lost their way.”"
Guinness, Os. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (pp. 241-242). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
"Similarly, evangelicals shouldn’t submit to the false political gods that flourish and abound in the United States of America. How do we identify the “false gods” in our own nation? We look for anything raised to a level of ultimacy that God alone occupies."
"Businesses in the entire state of Alaska, however, will be closed for Indigenous Peoples Day, after Gov. Bill Walker renamed the holiday last year. The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will also celebrate its first Indigenous Peoples’ Day, after the City Council voted unanimously in June to change the name of a holiday whose namesake, they decided, was not worthy of celebrating."
"Part of the problem is “invisibility,” Purdie-Vaughns writes. When the average person thinks of a “woman leader,” she argues, the image that comes to mind is a white woman ― like Sandberg. If you picture a black leader, you’re more likely to think of a black man than a black woman. “Because black women are not seen as typical of the categories ‘black’ or ‘woman,’ people’s brains fail to include them in both categories,” Purdie-Vaughns writes. “Black women suffer from a ‘now you see them now you don’t’ effect in the workplace.”"
"It’s not up to you to say something that answers the significant questions they’re asking. Those take some time to work through, and if they sense your willingness to linger with them a bit in the midst of the questions rather than offer simplistic answers, they’re more likely to want to explore them with you down the road. It’s not up to you to recommend the book they need to read, the counselor they need to see, the drug they need to take. You don’t have to provide a framework for thinking and feeling their way through their loss. Really, you just have to show up and say little. What they need more than someone with a lot of words is someone with a willingness to listen without judgment, someone who seems to be entering into their hurting world for the long haul of grief."
"While black enrollment at colleges and universities has increased dramatically in the last two decades, the share of students at top-tier institutions who are African American has actually dropped. Fewer than 4 percent of students at the most competitive colleges in the United States come from the nation’s lowest socioeconomic quartile. Statues, seals, and buildings continue to honor people who embraced slavery and sought to keep these kinds of students out."
"When we are strategizing ways to equip parents as the primary disciple-makers in their homes, we must also help them prioritize their own spiritual growth. We should think about slimming down our church programming in order to help families keep the Sabbath. We should think of ways to give burned-out mom's times to study the Bible together away from their children. We must take pains that family discipleship is not another burdensome duty but rather fruit that overflows from the hearts of parents who know and love Jesus."
"Down through the years, as I have lived and taught this approach to major donor fundraising, some of my colleagues in ministry have recoiled. It’s too “pastoral,” they feel, not “systematic” enough. The fact is, I am a very systematic person. I like to make a plan, work the plan, evaluate the plan. But my plans and systems for extracting gifts from major donors did more to wear me down than to build up the work we were doing — and they certainly did nothing for the donors themselves.. But at the heart of this system is a truth that took me years to understand"
"A topic few are being encouraged to discuss is the issue that inspired hundreds of Native American tribes across the USA to unite and take a stand: the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This is the first time since the Native American movement of the 70s that tribes have come together for a cause."
"Only one of 33 major national organizations contacted for this article is led by a woman — Jane Overstreet at Development Associates International. And only three are led by nonwhite males. “Some groups are talking about greater gender diversity, while others talk about racial diversity,” says Amy Reynolds, an associate professor of sociology at Wheaton College in Illinois, a leading evangelical institution that recently appointed its first female provost in its 156-year history. “The question is, what are they willing to do to get there?”"
"The truth is, How to Talk to Black People isn’t all that difficult. The candidate who wants African-American support should pretend black folks are experts on our own issues and experiences — because we are. He should learn those issues, tap that experience, formulate some thoughtful ideas in response."
"And yet, if anything, the corporate approach to introverts has been getting worse. The biggest culprit is the fashion for open-plan offices and so-called “group work”. Companies rightly think that the elixir of growth in a world where computers can do much of the grunt work is innovation. But they wrongly conclude that the best way to encourage creativity is to knock down office walls and to hold incessant meetings. This is ill-judged for a number of reasons. It rests on a trite analogy between intellectual and physical barriers between people. It ignores the fact that noise and interruptions make it harder to concentrate. And companies too often forget that whereas extroverts gain energy from other people, introverts need time on their own to recharge."
The football team for my alma mater, Central Michigan, had one of the most amazing finishes we'll likely see in college football this season in a win over #22 ranked Oklahoma State. Here's the final play:
I'm guessing that most of us have likely sought to improve our physical appearance in some form or fashion in order to enhance our job prospects. Whether it be updating our wardrobe or changing our hairstyle, it is not uncommon for people to seek to maximize how they look so that it will benefit them in the workplace.
But is undergoing plastic surgery in order to please an employer going too far? Or to take it another step, is it wrong to alter aspects of our appearance which are tied to our ethnic identity so that we can move up the corporate ladder?
Television personality Julie Chen recently revealed that she underwent plastic surgery early in her career in order to minimize her Asian features. Chen, probably most well-known as the host of CBS's "Big Brother", shared on a recent episode of "The Talk" that she underwent surgery in order to become more identifiable with mainstream America.
Chen offers background on her revelation:
"My secret dates back to — my heart is racing — it dates back to when I was 25 years old and I was working as a local news reporter in Dayton, Ohio," Julie began. She then set the scene by showing a clip of what a young Julie Chen looked like as a reporter at one of her first jobs and explaining how it was her dream to be a network news anchor some day.
"So, I asked my news director … over the holidays if anchors want to take vacations, could I fill in? And he said, 'You will never be on this anchor desk, because you're Chinese.' He said 'Let's face it Julie, how relatable are you to our community? How big of an Asian community do we have in Dayton? On top of that because of your Asian eyes, I've noticed that when you're on camera, you look disinterested and bored.'
"So, what am I supposed to say to my boss? I wanted to cry right then and there. It felt like a dagger in my heart, because all of my life I wanted to be a network anchor," she continued. She then went on to explain how the situation took her back to her childhood growing up in Queens, New York, experiencing racism, and how the kids on the bus would make "ching chong" comment on the bus. "It was racism," she said.
"So I started recording my newscasts every day and all I could see was my eyes, and I'd ask myself, 'Does he have a point?' I'd always ask myself, 'Do I look bored?' "So I started meeting with agents for career advice, and this one big-time agent basically told me the same thing. He had the biggest names in the business. And he told me the same thing. He said, 'I cannot represent you unless you get plastic surgery to make your eyes look better.' He then whips out a list of plastic surgeons who have done this procedure."
Julie then explained to the studio audience and her fellow co-hosts how half of all Asians are born with a double eyelid, and that the excess skin hangs down. "But the agent said, 'You're good at what you do. And if you get this plastic surgery done, you're going straight to the top.' "So, I consulted with my mother, and [she greeted me with] silence. She said, 'This is a deeper conversation that we have to have with your father.' We talked about if this was denying my heritage, and whether or not I should have this done.
"And this agent — he represented the most famous Asian broadcaster out there at the time — you know who I'm talking about and I'm not going to say names. "So, this divided my family. Eventually, my mom said, 'You wouldn't have brought this up to me unless this was something that you wanted to do.' And they told me that they'd support me, and they'd pay for it, and that they'd be there for me."
Julie then showed the audience side-by-side photos of what she looked like before and after her procedure. "And after I had it done, the ball did roll for me," she confessed. "And I wondered, did I give into the man?"
Unfortunately, Chen's dilemma is an all-too-common predicament that women in Hollywood face, but also in our society at large. Rather than being judged for their intelligence or aptitude, women are often limited by men based on their physical appearance. In Julie Chen's case, it was her "Chinese look" that was holding her back. So she changed how she looked.
As a white man, I can only begin to imagine the internal struggles that Chen (and so many others like her that find themselves in similar situations) went through in deciding to have plastic surgery that would alter her appearance. I do not judge her. I feel sorry that a talented broadcaster felt that she had to go under the knife to fit the definition of beauty that others had established for her. And when you add the ethnic component to it, there are all sorts of questions that are raised about what lengths we should go to in order to achieve professional success.
Because the standard of beauty within America has traditionally been that of the skinny, blonde-haired, blue-eyed model, women that don't fit this stereotype are often left questioning not only their own beauty, but also their self-worth. In thinking about this story, my mind was drawn back to an interview that I watched earlier this year when actor Dustin Hoffman comments on the profound impact that playing a woman in the movie "Tootsie" had on him. Here is the video:
Hoffman's point is well-taken. Too many men throughout history have not paid attention to certain women simply because of how they looked. Whether it be in the marketplace, in romantic relationships, in ministry settings or simply in friendships, we often fail to look below the surface. The psalmist writes in Psalm 139:14, "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well." Because each of us are made in the image of God, our physical attributes represent only a small part of our humanity We are each beautiful because God made us. It is too bad that we often don't see that.
You can read the rest of the article about Julie Chen's confession here.
