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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
We often see setbacks and disasters as events that keep us from our best life. But they're really opportunities to grow in leadership. The problem of suffering is a spiritual hurdle for many that disorients us and those we lead. Gayle D. Beebe tackles the existential crisis head-on, revealing that, although we are bewildered at first, these situations ultimately prepare us. Previously viewing these challenges as insurmountable, he has come to recognize them as essential passageways in our relationship with God. Beebe identifies seven crucibles—powerful catalysts for transformation—that, when embraced, shape us on this profound journey. Each chapter of this book delves into one of the crucibles, which Beebe intimately understands and has personally faced. Amid the realities of life's suffering, use this illuminating guidebook and find how colossal setbacks become a bedrock for a better, richer faith.
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Seitenzahl: 216
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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To Anna, Liz, and Richard God’s promise for the future
Contents
Foreword
David Brooks
There is a scene deep in this book that struck me as one of the keys to understanding the whole. Gayle Beebe is driving around Santa Barbara, near the Westmont College that he leads. There had been fires nearby in the days leading up to that drive, threatening campus and his community, and he is in the car with his daughter, pre-dawn, surveying the situation and trying to see what needs to be done to keep everybody safe. The rain is pouring down.
Gayle reports that as they were cruising the neighborhood, some premonition caused them to turn around and return home. It was a consequential decision, for that was the morning of the mudslides, and Gayle and his daughter might have driven into the grip of the slides that would take so many lives as people were sleeping and caught tragically unawares.
Where did that premonition come from?
It reminds me of the old line that we don’t see with our eyes; we see with our whole life. Over the years, if we are curious and really looking, we are building up a storehouse of models in our head, models that give us an intuitive awareness for how things will flow and not flow. These unconscious models give us the ability, as Gayle writes in this book, to “read the air.”
This ability is less about conscious calculation than it is a subliminal sense for what things will go together and what things will never go together, which way events will unfold and which way events will not unfold. This kind of knowledge is held mostly unconsciously, but it is built up consciously. It is the accumulation of a life spent reading, observing, and reflecting. It is knowledge transmogrified into wisdom. I once came across a recipe for a Chinese dish that instructed the cook to add an ingredient just before the water was about to boil. How do you know if the water is about to boil if it is not yet boiling? Experience. Wisdom.
I’ve been fortunate to have the chance to visit Westmont College annually for the past several years. Each time, I get to hear Gayle make a presentation about what he’s been thinking about over the previous year, and I get to make a presentation about the thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for that year. I’m always amazed by how our curiosity runs on parallel tracks.
For example, in 2023, I mentioned that I had become obsessed with the philosophy of Iris Murdoch. Specifically, I was obsessed by the way she links perception and morality. In the normal course of events, she writes, we see other people in self-serving ways, in ways that flatter our egos. Or we see people as instruments to be used to our own ends. But the key to being a good person is to see people as they are, to cast a “just and loving attention” on others, with eyes that are charitable and loving. She doesn’t put it this way, but our goal should be to see others a little of the way Jesus sees, with infinite compassion and mercy.
Gayle came up to me afterward and described his long fascination with Murdoch, and his study of her work, earlier in his career. It is amply evident in this book. As you explore its pages, you will see how often Gayle emphasizes the need to see things clearly. We sometimes think leadership is mostly about decision-making and acting. But I would say—and this book confirms the idea—that leadership is first of all the ability to answer this question: What is really going on here?
Gayle asks us to see in the deepest sense. Not only to ask: What events are unfolding, and what events are likely to unfold? But more crucially: Do I see what’s happening to me? Do I see what’s happening because of me? Do I see around the mental shortcomings that prevent me from really seeing? For example, have I factored in the truth that Daniel Kahneman identified—the reality that what you see is not all there is? There’s much more to any person or any situation than is immediately visible, and proper seeing always involves taking the extra step to ask: What am I missing here?
Gayle is writing about crucibles here, those difficult life moments, and you will profit from his taxonomy of crucibles, the way he categorizes crises into different types and helps us understand them more clearly. But I also come away with the awareness that the definition of a crucible, or any crisis, is that it shatters our normal way of seeing. In these moments, because of some tragedy or some betrayal, the normal patterns of life do not pertain. Everything is confusing, in turmoil. The old models don’t apply. One has to learn to re-see.
The tragedies that struck Santa Barbara—the fires and the floods—were a set of crucibles. I have been impressed by how they have permanently altered the way the folks at Westmont and perhaps the whole city see each other. There is a greater awareness of vulnerability, amid all the beauty of the place, a greater awareness of mutual dependence, and greater sense of community.
That kind of knowledge is hard won, after much grief, and it is a reminder that wisdom is an intellectual, emotional, and moral category all at once. In this book you will encounter two kinds of wisdom, one prosaic and one sacred. Gayle has read widely and questioned the secular writers who try to understand the world. Like all great teachers he passes along a lot of their wisdom in these pages. But his seeing is always inspired by the One who sees all. Ultimately, we are all trying to cast the kind of attention on some people that Jesus cast on all people. It is an impossible standard but the right one to orient your life around.
This is what all schools, and particularly Westmont, aim at their best to teach. I hope as you read this book, you will grow in your capacity to open your eyes and see.
Introduction
Lessons in Endurance
Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.
When you’re going through hell, keep going.
The unrelenting rainfall began shortly after 3:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 9, 2018. An atmospheric river had arrived over Santa Barbara and dumped its total payload in nine minutes. I’d awoken to the sound of pounding rain, and I felt the impact of this violent storm as I wandered out to the kitchen.
Officials had cautioned us about the storm the day before, and we’d also received third-hand reports that several Westmont students who surfed intended to “ride” the asphalt waves two miles downhill to the ocean. I initially found these reports humorous, but as I stood in the kitchen watching the torrential downpour, they terrified me. Thanks be to God, none of our students were awake—or awake enough to grab their surfboards. However, just a few hundred yards to the east of our campus, one of three creek beds that run to the ocean carried a huge wall of water that would ultimately destroy one hundred homes, seriously damage four hundred others, and end the lives of twenty-three people who were crushed or swept away in the debris flow.
Most of those around the world who awoke to the news of the Montecito debris flow read it as just another news story of human tragedy piped in on digital media. But for those of us in harm’s way, it came as a demoralizing setback. Just three weeks earlier we had survived the Thomas Fire, a wildfire running the ridgeline of the Santa Ynez Mountains above campus, and one of the largest blazes in California history. It ruined the air quality in Santa Barbara and, after burning for six days, forced the evacuation of our students on December 10, 2017, right before finals week. We had just returned to campus and started spring semester on January 8 when we learned about the impending storm. But none of us could have imagined how bad it would be. Although local officials had issued warnings and even encouraged residents to evacuate, few left their homes.
More than a year after these two disasters, I spoke at a national gathering of college presidents about our emergency preparedness plans. I explained how we’d responded to a natural disaster we’d anticipated (the Thomas Fire) and one no one had expected (the Montecito debris flow). As we moved into the Q and A, my emotional response to one question surprised me: “What have you learned about yourself and about God as a result of these catastrophic events?” Visual memories of people I knew who had died overwhelmed me. As I choked back my emotions, I began sharing all that this season meant to me personally.
THE LESSONS OF CATASTROPHIC EVENTS
At the time of the Montecito debris flow, many people who had previously been evacuated for what turned out to be nonevents chose this time to stay in their homes—with disastrous consequences. I attended seven funerals in thirty days. I felt the loss of many people in the community who had done so much to make life better for others.
I honored local newscasters at our opening convocation on January 8, only to see them a week later suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder because they’d been among the first to discover bodies swept downstream to the ocean.
What, then, did I learn about myself? In the wake of these tragedies, I needed to figure out a way to build meaning from all the discrete pieces of individual information that now needed to be woven into a meaningful whole. This undertaking would be the linchpin motivating my behavior.
As for the second part of the question—what had I learned about God—I realized I’d been thinking about this for a long time. My father had died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1989, just a few years after the abrupt loss of my favorite pastor in 1982. Both of these experiences led to deep soul-searching and had taught me a great deal about the nature of faith, the harsh realities of life, and how our response to tragedy and suffering shapes us. Other setbacks and obstacles I’ve faced have taught me that life is a perpetual gauntlet with challenge on one side and opportunity on the other—it’s never simply one or the other but both at the same time. I’ve come to rely on God because of these experiences of suffering, not in spite of them.
Despite my challenges, I’ve developed a deep and abiding confidence in the goodness and grace of God. I have come to see my hardships not as barriers to God, but as divine passageways. Ultimately, I have discovered that my crucibles are the same trials God has used throughout history to challenge and shape his people—but only when they let him.
How, then, do we learn to let him?
THE CRUCIBLES THAT SHAPE US
Harvard business historian Nancy Koehn writes poignantly of this process in her book Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times. Her book elevates and accents how challenges and crises have remarkable power to shape our lives and forge our leadership. In similar fashion, this book explains how we can learn from the crucibles of life, invite God into the middle of them, and subsequently turn them into triumphs of the human spirit.1 Crucibles have the power to shape us by refining our character, calling forth our best effort, and teaching us to rely on God. Rarely if ever anticipated, crucibles test our capacity to adapt and change. In turn, they also invite us to find new solutions to vexing problems to secure successful and sustaining outcomes both personally and professionally.
What defines a crucible is a modification and combination of the three aspects of the word that Merriam-Webster outlines: (1) a high degree of heat or energy that (2) creates a severe or significant test and (3) uses a place, situation, or experience to catalyze growth, refinement, and change. Working from this definition and reflecting on experiences that have shaped me, I explore seven defining crucibles that confront and challenge virtually every leader at some point. We’ll cover each one in a chapter of this book.
The crucible of missed meaning. This crucible involves the suffering we experience when our incomplete understanding causes us to miss the meaning in a situation and respond from mistaken perception. Failing to develop self-understanding and self-regulation—two essential ingredients to success in life and leadership—can limit our comprehension and knowledge.
The crucible of enduring challenge. This experience focuses on perseverance and the honest admission that success stems mostly from a firm resolve to keep going rather than give up, despite how much we may know. We conquer persistent challenges by outlasting the obstacles and the opposition and believing fully in our mission and purpose.
The crucible of human treachery. These situations relate primarily to a spiritual and intellectual struggle: How do we handle betrayal? Cultivating deeper self-awareness, a willingness to self-correct, and clarity of purpose help us combat sabotage and betrayal.
The crucible of awakened moral conscience. This crucible recognizes the need for leaders to develop character and integrity. We experience a moral awakening personally when we confront our failure to live up to our deeply held convictions and determine to do better. In 2020, our nation faced a reassessment of how well we honor the promises of our founding ideals and how we can build a more just and equitable society. Or, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., how do we pursue the long “arc of the moral universe . . . [that] bends toward justice”?
The crucible of social conflict. This confronts us today. Born of long-simmering social tensions throughout our country, these festering divisions arise from unfulfilled promises activated by social unrest. Recognizing nonviolent, civil disobedience as a biblical imperative has given Christians the spiritual strength to endure hardship and setback, while pursuing the greater good of a free and equitable society. We still have a long way to go, but we cling to hope, which drives all constructive and enduring social change.
The crucible of human suffering. The sixth crucible occurs when we’re powerless in the face of natural disaster, disease, or human evil. Navigating such suffering requires a larger context of meaning and purpose, and a caring community. As our community at Westmont experienced dangerous disasters, mourned deaths, and welcomed displaced students fleeing human evil, the grace and faithfulness of God and the love and support of our extended community helped us endure.
The crucible of personal choice. Here we explore what happens when we make decisions and choices that end up going terribly wrong, and we must confront the reality that our own moral choices make real and enduring impacts.
Throughout the book, I demonstrate how these seven crucibles relate to biblical principles that can inform and guide us. I also describe spiritual practices that not only sustain and guide us, but invite God to shape us into the person and leader he wants us to be. And I focus attention on the power and role of seeking meaning throughout every crucible experience. Each chapter ends with a reflection section. Taking the time to journal through the questions or discuss them with a mentor or group will deepen your understanding of how these crucibles are at play in your own life.
ENCOURAGEMENT TO ENDURE
If we want to invest our energy in purposes that outlive us, we must learn how to let God shape us in the midst of our crucibles. We choose whether we collapse under the weight of our struggles and calamities or rise to the challenges before us with God’s help. Crucibles bring suffering but they also offer transformative opportunities that shape our character and help us become the best version of ourselves. As we respond, we can fulfill God’s greatest purposes for our life.
In the pages that follow, I share my experiences and the lessons I learned with each crucible to encourage and inspire you to persevere in the midst of your own challenges. I believe you’ll discover, as I did, a deep and abiding confidence in the goodness and grace of God. I pray you’ll find strength to keep going and come to see crucibles not as barriers to God but as divine passageways that deepen your relationship with him and strengthen your character. In the process, I hope you discover a framework of meaning that inspires and guides you.
FOR REFLECTION
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously observed, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”2 The why question often determines how we understand pivotal moments in both life and leadership. Wrestling meaning out of crucibles requires cultivating internal conversations that increase self-awareness and enable us to self-correct when necessary. We can begin those conversations in the midst of a crucible by answering three soul-shaping questions:
1. Do I accurately see and understand what’s happening to me? As we reflect on this question, we begin to recognize and identify the pivotal experiences of our life that have shaped us.
2. What is happening inside of me? Individuals, education, and work have influenced us, as have our family of origin and the family we develop. We draw on our memory, imagination, and will as we process these experiences, elevating some, diminishing others, and recognizing patterns and purposes that emerge over time.
3. What is happening because of me? As we consider the convictions arising from our experiences and reflect on our actions and accomplishments, we begin to understand the contribution we’re making personally and professionally.
These questions help us think deeply about the crucibles challenging us and help us better respond to our trials, develop our character and our leadership, and grow closer to God throughout the process. Keep them in mind as you read about each of the seven crucibles.
1
The Crucible of Missed Meaning
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear [and understand].
We had the experience, but we missed the meaning.
Shortly after becoming president of Westmont College in 2007, I met Mary Docter and Laura Montgomery, two veteran professors who developed the “cycle of global learning,” a framework and philosophy for our study-abroad programs. The cycle of global learning can counteract T. S. Eliot’s famous observation, “We had the experience, but we missed the meaning.” This three-semester process begins with a pre-trip seminar that orients students to traveling internationally and understanding cultures different from their own. During the second semester, professors accompany students on their journey to help them interpret their experiences. The semester after the trip, students take a reentry seminar to bring the learning home.
In contrast, the crucible of missed meaning refers to the failure to perceive reality accurately. Misperception can lead to responses that miss the mark and fail to provide a successful strategy or solution. What we thought would work doesn’t. Those we strive to lead become frustrated. Even though our idea looked great, it’s impossible to implement in reality and causes a loss of confidence across the organization. How then do we learn to see and perceive, hear and understand?
In Matthew 13, Jesus says we’ll always be seeing but never perceiving, always hearing, but never understanding. What applied in Jesus’ day continues to be true today. We can be unwilling to truly see our current situation and its context accurately. How can we learn to look with the eyes of understanding and anticipate what’s coming next? And once we see, or perceive, how do we make an appropriate and timely response?
Jesus taught in parables to help us make a gestalt shift and capture a deeper meaning and reality than we first perceived. Parables often reveal a central spiritual truth that brings insight into our human condition. This indirect approach penetrates our natural defenses that resist God. The Greek words for seeing and perceiving include both seeing with the eye and perceiving with the mind. Jesus encourages us to develop the capacity to look at a situation and perceive the deeper realities at play through our observation and experience.
In similar fashion, our contemporary context helps us recognize the ongoing challenge of perceiving reality accurately. Iris Murdoch writes poignantly about the nature of the spiritual life being a perpetual quest to perceive things as they really are, not as we wish they were.1 She also notes that once we perceive reality accurately, we need to act correctly and appropriately. But how can we be sure that we’re perceiving reality accurately and making an appropriate response? The answer lies in part in developing our capacity for perceptual insight.
When training a new leader or addressing a mistake, we often tend to focus on the presenting problem rather than the real problem. When we get drawn into a situation, we may believe we’ve understood it adequately and created an appropriate response to get back on track. But in so many cases, we fail to stay emotionally connected and don’t completely understand the problem. The remedy is to stay engaged but sufficiently differentiated, so that we can make course corrections as we refine our perception and gain wider understanding.
FOCUSED ATTENTION LEADS TO WIDER UNDERSTANDING
Effective leadership is built on focused attention, the ability to communicate, and the capacity to see how discrete particulars fit into a larger whole. In 2016, Charles Duhigg released his award-winning book Smarter Faster Better.2 The volume presents a wide array of information in eight highly appealing, tightly written chapters, including one on focus. This chapter deals with the difference between the mass of people who see only discrete particulars and the exceptional but limited few who can weave these discrete particulars into a meaningful whole.
In one tragic example, he tells the sad and demoralizing story of an Air France jet that crashed due to “cognitive tunneling,” the tendency of our brain to become overly focused on what’s directly in front of us. This phenomenon causes all kinds of accidents, because we lose our ability to balance the need to focus on specific stimuli while simultaneously keeping a wider frame of reference that leads to good judgment.
To prevent cognitive tunneling, we need to learn how to create mental models that allow us to assimilate new information rapidly regardless of our circumstances. To illustrate the difference, Duhigg tells the riveting story of Darlene, a neonatal nurse with the unusual ability to spot a baby in distress before monitors signaled a problem. Her remarkable capacity resulted from a combination of technical competence, intuition, and expertise gained from thousands of hours of focused attention and practiced experience, which all contributed to sound medical judgment and a willingness to act. She could see and anticipate what was going to happen even before the sophisticated monitors and medical equipment sounded an alarm.
CULTURE AS A DIVINE PASSAGEWAY
How do we learn to see, perceive, and act in this way? One great example is found in the book of Acts. Acts 10 and 11 demonstrate how Peter learned to look with new eyes and see the work of God differently. Although culturally and religiously Jewish, Peter became the foundation of faith emblematic of the early church. His proximity to Jesus allowed him to reorient his perception, which brought understanding and growth to the first Christians. Known initially as an impulsive disciple given to defiant outbursts, Peter matured after years of discipline and devotion to Christ and steadfastly embodied God’s love, goodness, and grace.
The incredible story begins in Acts 10 with Cornelius—a Roman centurion and a God-fearing, devout man, “generous to those in need and given to regular prayer.” An angel tells him to send for Peter. Meanwhile, Peter has a vision in which God tells him to kill and eat animals devout Jews considered unclean. Peter struggles to make sense of his dream because his plausibility structure limits his understanding. He not only blunders initially; he repeats himself and errs a second time. He struggles like so many of us because his cultural perception of life prevents him from embracing multiple ways to see and respond to God.
When the three men arrive from Caesarea and ask him to visit Cornelius, Peter realizes their information is directly related to the meaning of his dream, and he begins to perceive God’s greater purposes. Neither Cornelius nor Peter have yet fully understood the purposes of God in the world. As their encounter unfolds, Peter stumbles beyond the narrow understanding of his provincial worldview.
He struggles like so many of us because his cultural perception of life prevents him from embracing multiple ways to see and respond to God.
Peter eventually discerns that cultures serve not as barriers to human understanding but as divine passageways to God. So often culture leads us to focus on our differences, but God uses cultural differences between Peter and Cornelius to engineer a pivotal breakthrough to a higher level of understanding.
A few chapters later, in Acts 15
