No Vision No Policy
Years ago I read David Herbert Donald’s, Lincoln, and found it profoundly applicable to my own life and situation as a pastor. Lincoln himself knew what it meant to be accused of not having a vision, of having no moral standard and of being a poor leader. I don’t think Lincoln had a vision except for the freedom of all people. But I don’t think that is necessarily a vision as in a corporate goal to achieve. Rather, it is something to be proclaimed and practiced. The freedom of all people is a reality only cloaked in the evil of humanity and this world. The emancipation of ourselves and others is an urgent and instantaneous necessity that must be manifested at every instance. No vision is required. There’s also no seeing ahead but to the next immediate point. Here’s one of the quotes from Donald that impacted me most:
church, leadership, lincoln, ministry, naked pastor, pastor Share ThisFrom Lincoln’s fatalism derived some of his most lovable traits: his compassion, his tolerance, his willingness to overlook mistakes. That belief did not, of course, lend him to lethargy or dissipation. Like thousands of Calvinists who believed in predestination, he worked indefatigably for a better world—for himself, for his family, and for his nation. But it helped to buffer the many reverses that he experienced and enabled him to continue a strenuous life of aspiration.
It also made for a pragmatic approach to problems, a recognition that if one solution as fated not to work another could be tried. ‘My policy is to have no policy’ became a kind of motto from Lincoln—a motto that infuriated the sober, doctrinaire people around him who were inclined to think that the President had no principals either. He might have offended his critics less if he had more often used the analogy he gave James G. Blaine when explaining his course on Reconstruction: ‘The pilots on our Western rivers steer from point to point as they call it—setting the course of the boat no further than they can see; and that is all I propose to myself in this great problem.’
Both statements suggest Lincoln’s reluctance to take the initiative and make bold plans; he preferred to respond to the actions of others. They also show why Lincoln in his own distinctively American way had the quality John Keats defined as forming ‘ a Man of Achievement’, that quality ‘which Shakespeare possessed so enormously… Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’
I like that term: negative capability. I recently read The Positive Power of Negative Thinking and The Power of Negative Thinking, but I hadn’t heard the term negative capability before. It reminds me of a quote from “SoulMates” by Thomas Moore, p. 142:
“Another benefit is the possibility of finding more profound and lasting solutions to our life problems. If we rush to solve a problem, the solution will need to be something ready-made or quickly put together, and will most likely be a project of the ego; but if we sustain the tension created by two worlds colliding, an unexpected solution will emerge eventually from the opening to soul that tension creates. If we tolerate moments of chaos and confusion, something truly new can come to light.”
I see the vein you’ve been on lately Dave and I really like it. I asked a friend of mine what would happen if her vision was taken away, and she said in so many words that she couldn’t live without it. Her identity from a small child has been in her “calling”. It was the only thing that kept her going. I will say she has an extremely unnatural gift of working with the most rejected of people and she does it with such a soft heart. I realized in talking to her it would kill her to remove that vision. It illustrated something to me. And it was this:
If we remove our need for vision we feel naked and confused about what our life is worth. Our first sense is to wander aimlessly, like a sheep looking for a Shepard. We feel qualified by vision because it means somehow we can be better people (a big lie) one day. Always looking to the horizon for the revival or a self epiphany, while we starve in our seats of vision. We never think of the immediate simple things as having any worth because they are so familiar and we see them as mundane. If that is so it’s because we do not see the value in them, we are not operating in them because we want the better, the new self, the rich self, the ministry star, the missionary, ect. Or even more sad we see our gifts like servanthood, charity, love, and kindness as far off unattainable virtues. We hope for the things we already have and don’t recognize, and for things we really don’t need but somehow we think they will complete us.
When we remove these lies what do we do? I have no advice for my friend even though I know that this is a truth. I feel freed by it, but I am also confused? It is hard after so many years of being cloaked in falsehood to see clearly. It’s like being exposed to bright sunlight after having been in a basement for 20 years. It is sick and awful that we live under these illusions, but we know nothing else…..the church(as in the whole wide world church)…our apparent protective covering….has shoveled this to us in the name of God. And now we are abandoned to deal with it on our own.
I think we have so many illusions floating about that we everyday are pushed in ten different directions. We still see the Pharisees(whoever the present day ones are) as being providers of truth. We are afraid that our conscience will kill us if we experiment with pushing our boundaries, like someone will come and knock on our mental door and drag us out to be dogmeat for the dark to feast on.
Legalism is a state of fear, but unfortunately a state of safety as well. Though it is false safety it doesn’t change it’s power. We are afraid to be free, because what the hell are we going to do with it. Everyone around us is still in the pit while we walk above it alone free and we wonder if it might just be better to be down there instead of lonely up top. I know this is a dark way of looking at things, but I think it is a true mental process people go through. We become ostracized by family and friends for being supposed heretics when we branch out (for some people).
Now this post is not a question I am posing to you Dave, though I’m sure you may have things to add, it is just a thought process I am in myself I wanted to lay bare. These questions are for everyone including myself. There is a block when we try to move into freedom and I think that some of these reasons are why. So my last question is, what are some practical things we can do to help ourselves and others move into freedom? We are going to feel the slap of the fresh air, we can’t escape that, so now where do we go?
amaris: really good question. i will actually try to answer that tomorrow in another post, if that’s okay.
cool man
Hey Dave, did you ever do a post on the documentary Jesus Camp. I would be interested in your perspective, though I know that would be one tough subject. I wonder what kind of discussion it might open up. Though that movie might not be best for some to see. My husband felt traumatized after seeing it because it made him so sick. It’s not a documentary I necessarily advise people to see, but I wonder what those who have think about it.
i don’t even want to watch it. maybe i will though. perhaps i should. it’s too close to home in many ways. i’ve SEEN children treated that way, including my own, by religious zealots.
Right on Amaris ~> Our vision can really get in the way of following Christ. Also it seems that there are so many others who want to impose their vision on us and quite often we willingly abide. We then are really deceived because we’re not following Christ then, we’re following the vision of man.
Freedom is actually a very lonely place. It’s easier to slide along with the flow of what others are doing and call it faith or accept what has been institutionalized and not think for ourselves. But at the same time that loneliness is not really ugly because that’s where Christ is really at.
blind leading the blind?
“blind leading the blind?”
Hmmmm. Since blindness is usually not reversible nor miraculously cured, it would seem to me that a blind person could learn a lot more from a blind person than from a sighted one.
A sighted person might steer a blind person in the right direction and might clear obstacles from the path both of which might be helpful to getting around. But wouldn’t a blind person rather learn to move independently with some amount of self-assurance instead of having to depend upon someone else to clear the way?
And what does a sighted person know of the feelings that accompany blindness–the frustrations, the longings, or the anger? Not much. Maybe the blind SHOULD lead the blind.
Fanny Crosby one of the most prolific hymn writers was blind, yet in my opinion she knew more about sight than many people.
From Blessed Assurance
vs.2
Perfect submission, perfect delight!
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
How can a blind person understand sight in order to write about it? I think that when Jesus enters our life we are given a sight that man cannot possibly understand.
Pro 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people are uncontrolled; but he who keeps the law will be happy.
Wow! Now we have come full circle and the blind leading the blind is preferable to sight. I really don’t know what to say…