soundbytes: success

"Success is becoming in middle adulthood what we dreamed of in late childhood.  Everything else is simply evidence of loss of control." 

~ Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

"Men who really change are the ones who have failed enough that they are broken beyond self-remedy."

~ Ray Ortlund, "How Men Change" (10.may.11)

"Don't waste your life on fatal success." 

~ John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life, p 46

how revival goes viral

"So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus."  ~ John 12:10-11

"Bet you can't do it twice." The taunt rings in my ears whenever I drain a three-point shot while playing a student in basketball.  I laugh every time I read this passage because it's so much like what the priests said to Lazarus: "So you rose from the dead? Bet you can't do it twice!"

But more interesting is why the priests felt the need to kill Lazarus; simply put, it was because so many people were following Jesus because of him.  What was his secret? 

I don't think it was his ability to lead, or "gather," men.  I seriously doubt that Lazarus was following any sort of growth model - pass 200 people, now do this!  He didn't have Facebook and Twitter to send his cool ideas viral.  I doubt he had laid out a five-year-plan and I doubt that he had a personal mission statement. 

And I don't think he was an exceptionally motivating and moving speaker.  I doubt that he even felt the need to "sell" people on Christ - I can't picture Lazarus laying out the illogical reasoning of atheism or providing a rational defense of eternal life or publishing an existential-experiential account of "two days in heaven."  I've won a lot of arguments, but I've never won a single soul through those arguments. 

I bet Lazarus simply told people he was alive.  Maybe told them his story. He was probably pretty excited.  Most importantly, he knew he what didn't need to do.  He realized the power of what he was saying rather than how it was said.  He knew how dead he had been; he wasn't sharing because he felt he should - the gospel defined him.  Revivals go viral when a man realizes how dead he was, and can't stop sharing it. 

"Our first business is neither to gather men nor to move them, but to preach in the speech of our time the universal and moving Gospel.  Let it gather them, and let it stir them. The first condition of a true revival is a sound gospel."

~ Forsyth, The Church, The Gospel & Society (p. 91)

Thanks to Sean Brown introducing me to this perspective on the text as I walk through the book of John. 

no levels of hell, only levels of hypocrisy

What is the difference between someone who willfully ignores the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully ignores the Bible on caring for the poor?  The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and one involves a social norm in the church. 

~  David Platt, Radical (p. 111)