Since then I’ve taken plenty of mental notes about the show and the lives depicted in the show. Most of these notes are about how not to live because nearly all the characters on the show are what I would call anti-heroes, with Donald Draper being the chief anti-hero. These characters, in many ways, are depicted as heroes, but they continually fall on their own sword making awful decisions in the heat of the moment. We cheer for them despite knowing they will continually fail. It could be why people still watch after over 60 episodes—people are waiting for the anti-heroes to become heroes.

Here’s a few lessons I’ve learned through the first four seasons of the show:

Selfish People Destroy Everything Around Them No Matter How Much Changes

I see the majority of the characters on the show as selfish individuals who seek their own before they spend a second thinking about others. Don Draper, the main character, is the king of the selfish people on the show, but his wife (and then ex-wife) Betty is no better. And all throughout the now five seasons of the show, we see both of their lives unravel. Sure they each have moments when things seem to be coming together, but then, sure enough, things collapse around them.

Even through divorce and new jobs, neither of them, nor many of the other characters, can keep from destroying the people around them.

Habits Have to Change Before People Can Change

Nearly all of the characters of the show have watershed moments when they desire to live differently, sometimes in significant ways. And yet, none of these characters change in any significant way. And I attribute this to trying to change as a person without changing the environment. At one point Don is noticeably trying to be less of a womanizer, but he can’t resist from drinking too much late at night in the office or at a bar, and in his many weak moments he falls back into old habits.

The saying of old habits die hard is true, especially when we’re not willing to change anything that effects our bad behaviors.

Smoking Only Looks Cool On TV

Hopefully this one is fairly self explanatory. I’ve never watched someone light one up and thought, “wow, they make that look cool.” Smoking. It will kill you. Literally. Having not been alive in the 60s and now living in a world where you can’t even smoke in most restaurants or bars, the amount of smoking shown on the show is almost bizarre to see.

Hiding is Not a Long-Term Solution

Despite a few close calls, Don has managed to hide his true identity from almost everyone for a long time. But especially in season 4 of the show, Don is overcome with fear of being found out for his lies. He begins to tell people he has little business trusting, mostly because we get the sense that he can’t survive keeping it all in for much longer. Speaking truth is freedom for the soul.

People Are Watching You and Learning What is Acceptable

In the middle of season 4 Sally Draper sneaks out of a doctor’s appointment to visit her dad in the city, unbeknownst to her mom. Betty, her mom, berates her when picking her up later in the episode, but we see clearly that Sally has learned her life lessons from her mother. Sally gets her way and pouts when she doesn’t.

All of Sally’s selfish patterns in life have been picked up from watching her parents model that lifestyle to their own detriment. Little do Don and Betty know but the people closest to them are watching and picking up ideas of how to live life acceptably.

For those of you Mad Men fans, what lessons have you learned from the show?

Having been at my current church, serving in the same roles for almost five years, I began to sense an itch within me for something different. Not something better, not something that would be a better position of title, just something different. I began to share with my dad, walking down one of the freshly cut fairways, how frustrated I was. Change was elusive and didn’t seem to be on the horizon, but I couldn’t imagine continuing with the status quo much longer.

I needed something to change quickly.

And my dad, in his typical mode of operation, dropped a nugget of wisdom on me that I still process through all these months later. He asked me…

Do you care more about your own gain or the church?

Mostly the words just stung because I quickly realized the desire I had to advance my “career” instead of serving faithfully where God had placed me. I was far more concerned about myself than I was my church. I was a leader in terms of overseeing people and having a position that allowed me to facilitate with ongoing ministries, but I was not stewarding the leadership God had given me well.

When leadership becomes more about self-advancement than it is about the service of our lives, we’ve gotten the whole thing turned upside down. Within the circles I run in, I title this calling God gives to us, as His disciples, the death of Christian leadership—the calling toward a dying to self for the sake of Kingdom advancement. Christian leadership begins with death.

Jonah

I’ve always read Jonah as a negative example of what happens when leadership becomes more about our desires than about following God’s leading. I can just picture Jonah sitting on top of a hill outside of Nineveh, looking down at the city he has just helped save from destruction, with a tree near him wilting, as a picture of his own heart’s callousness to what God was up to. God will accomplish His will, but our personal desires often get in the way.

I don’t think Jonah ever truly died to his own agenda in order to fully follow God’s. Sure, he went where God asked him to go (of course, that may have had something to do with a giant fish eating him), but He never saw how God desired to work through him.

Death

Saint Augustine captures the heart of true leadership: “Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending.”

All of us desire to make an impact with the lives God has given us. It’s a long road to die to self before God can truly use us for what He has in mind.

While influence and significance are high on the radars of many who have positions of leadership, we must first come to know that true influence and significance begins with a death to self for the sake of service to God and His church.

How have you experienced dying to self within a leadership position?

What is surprising to me is not that we have the ability to process so many ideas each day, but that we do so little with all of those ideas each day.

When was the last time you had a great idea and did nothing with it?

For me it was yesterday. I had the idea of calling up a friend who has recently gotten divorced to encourage him and pray for him. I never made the phone call. The idea fell away as the immediacy of other pressing moments became higher priorities.

Philippians 4:8 says:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Ideas typically come in the form of thoughts. Here Paul is encouraging our “thought life” to be centered around things that matter.

Because of all this I think my decision to start blogging consistently back in September of 2007 truly changed my life. Here’s how…

Space to Process

Blogging forced me to dive into at least one idea almost every day. Rather than allowing life to fly by, processing and writing through one idea I got into the habit of creating space to process ideas rather than letting them float away in time and space.

For ideas to really make a difference in our lives we need the space to process them. For me, I always (well, not always, but that’s the goal) jot down any idea I have into Evernote either on my phone or computer.

Rarely do I have time and space in the moment to process through each idea as it comes, but by jotting down the full extent of each idea I can come back to it. Only about 50% of my ideas ever resonate with me when I come back to them, but that still leaves half of my ideas as something I can build on and begin to process through.

Forming Concrete Ideas For Life to Flow Into

I’m blown away but how unintentionally I can float through life. Interactions with people, watching television, reading books—I hardly ever think critically about what is going on underneath the surface.

What if we took the ideas going on inside our minds and began to let them influence how we live?

Blogging allowed me to not only process through ideas, but also to form them around written words that my life could then flow into. Processing through ideas is one thing, forming ideas into something of substance gives life a launching point. Ideas at this point are no longer just things stuck in our minds but they are written down for all to see.

For me, blogging was not just about getting readers, or about finding “my voice” as many say, blogging changed how I lived because I had been implicated by how God was forming ideas in my mind and then speaking them into the written word.

What practices have you used to implement ideas into your life?

Generally speaking I think Christians have done a fairly poor job of engaging the conversation surrounding depression. Just last week I was reading a book by a pastor I highly respect, and in the book he, in so many words, explained that depression was always able to be overcome by entering into our God of hope through faith.

Imagine someone who has been medically diagnosed with medical or seasonal depression reading the words that they just need more of God or more faith, then they’ll be healed. If it were me, I’d burn the book.

No one needs to be chastised for something they feel helpless in dealing with on their own.

I love the conversation Parker Palmer had with a woman who asked him why God allows people to live in the personal hell of depression. His response, “I have no idea.” Here’s the fall out from that conversation:

My response had given her an alternative to the cruel “Christian explanations” common in the church to which she belonged—that people who take their lives lack faith or good works or some other redeeming virtue that might move God to rescue them. My not knowing had freed her to stop judging herself for being depression and to stop believing that God was judging her (pg 59).

Part of this struggle we sense to provide a good “Christian explanation” is a lack of comfort with mystery. I have a tendency to want to explain out the mystery of life and faith and God. Or I want to throw a book or Bible verse at someone’s problem. And all of this is really just my power-hungry self trying to declare victory with a perfect solution rather than doing the difficult work of declaring the mystery and walking the journey of the mystery.

Mystery surrounds every deep experience of the human heart: the deeper we go into the heart’s darkness or its light, the closer we get to the ultimate mystery of God. But our culture wants to turn mysteries into puzzles to be explained or problems to be solved, because maintaining the illusion that we can “straighten things out” makes us feel powerful. Yet mysteries never yield to solutions or fixes—and when we pretend they do, life becomes not only more banal but also more hopeless because the fixes never work (pg 60).

How do you handle conversations surrounding depression?

The lure of significance and influence on the internet and in life often turns us into copiers rather than creators. We see something that others are latching onto en masse and rather than do the difficult work of creating something that might connect with people, we choose to copy what has already been done, tweak it, and then package it as our own.

Copying is often said to be the highest form of flattery possible, but I think it goes a step beyond this.

Copying maligns the Creator God who has created us in His image with His creative imprint. The same power that raised Christ from the grave lives in each of us. The same power that helped speak the universe into existence through the artistic hand of the Creator, lives in us.

Copying is an unwillingness to do the work.

Copying ruins our confidence in God to work through us.

Copying is a mask to hide behind that will eventually become exposed.

Creation is rarely, if ever, easy. But creation says to us over and over again that God can continually speak into the expanse of our empty world.

We see it every spring when the flowers bloom, the green shoots begin to pop out from the ground, the leaves slowly grow on the trees—it’s the reminder that God is continually creating and recreating previously dead things.

Creation says to those around us, God isn’t yet done with this world. He’s still here. He’s still at work.

Creating allows us to build the confidence that God can work through us.

Stop copying and subsequently maligning our Creator.

Start creating.

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The last thing my pastor told me before I left for seminary saved my faith. I think he was just trying to save me from having a rough time in my first New Testament class or from getting frustrated with my professors. As it turned out, he shared something that I have clung to over the past eleven years.

Settling into our breakfast at a Bob Evans where you could hear the roar of the New Jersey Turnpike a few hundred feet away, he told me the following about seminary, “Don’t expect to find all of the answers.”

He was responding to a comment I made about looking forward to really digging into the Bible. I’m pretty sure he meant that I wouldn’t learn everything there is to know about the Bible. That in and of itself was sound advice, but that wasn’t quite what saved my faith.

I don’t know what I expected from seminary. I’m pretty sure I expected lots of answers to all of the tough questions that Christians face—I wanted everything to compute. I also expected seminary to be awesome because I wouldn’t have to take science or math classes, while I could crack Greek jokes in the cafeteria all of the time.

Seminary certainly had very little math, but the Greek jokes left something to be desired (sigh).

Instead of finding all of the answers, seminary revealed all of the dirty little secrets that pastors aren’t allowed to talk about because they’d lose their jobs if they brought any of it up with their congregations.

I confronted controversial topics like biblical authority, inerrancy, the problem of evil, the character of God, how salvation works, the historic views of hell, women in ministry, where we got the Bible from, and the list goes on. My pastor had warned me that I wouldn’t find all of the answers in seminary, and he was right. I found many more questions and problems than the average Christian faces in Sunday School. Since he had warned against finding all of the answers, I was able to take it in stride.

His advice became my mantra as I faced fresh theological dilemmas that had no solution in sight.

I could have swung in any number of directions, but I ended up realizing that my foundation wasn’t some brand of theology or air-tight way of interpreting the Bible. Christianity also doesn’t survive by hiding from tough questions, even the kinds of questions that don’t seem to have answers.

I’ve seen Christians deal with tough questions in a variety of ways. Sometimes they just gave up, admitting that the answers of their childhood faith couldn’t cut it in the adult world. Others dismissed tough questions and the people who asked them—no doubt fearing their faith would crumble if exposed to tension.

Though my pastor was trying to save me from the disappointment of not learning the Bible inside out in seminary, he also planted a seed of doubt that has served me well. While in seminary I learned that my faith could survive the tough questions that seminary professors needed to ask because Jesus never promised us all of the answers.

Jesus promised us life, hope, peace, joy, and love. He promised that remaining in him is enough.

I struggle with the tough questions sometimes. I’m not afraid to face them, and I never want to settle for easy answers—even if I’m convinced that many of them can be reasonably resolved. However, at the end of the day, Jesus isn’t going to test us to see if we answered all of the tough questions correctly. He’s going to ask if we abided in him and let him reshape us into Kingdom people—members of his family.

God’s answer for our tough questions is his presence. When I can abide in him, I know him and suddenly finding all of the answers doesn’t matter.

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Ed Cyzewski is the blogger at www.inamirrordimly.com, co-author of Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus, and author of Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life. He lives in Columbus, OH with his wife (who is due to give birth in July!) and house rabbits (who do nothing but beg for treats and chew on his couch).

No. 2: Develop a mentoring relationship. Sometimes dips in our own ministry are a result of pouring out into a meaningful relationship. Prayerfully consider whose life God may be calling you to invest in and pour into.

No. 8: Develop healthy friendships. Ministry seeps up time better than a sponge in water. At times, the last thing you want to do is engage other people. But the priceless benefits of having a healthy friendship far outweigh the bad.

No. 9: Don’t be afraid to set boundaries. Problems and To-Do lists seem to bleed into every area of your life. Learning to say no is not a sin. Overextending yourself spreads you thin and keeps you from doing your best in every situation.

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2. Trevin Wax is a prolific blogger who churns out posts like few can. Recently he wrote a post encouraging seminary students to remember a few lessons during their studies. As someone just about to finish school, I found his remarks to be spot on. No one wants to walk away from years of seminary wishing they would have gone about the whole thing differently, heed this advice.

The biggest danger in seminary is that in the increase of knowledge, you lose sight of the most important things. The more you know, the more you are likely to forget.

Satan would love nothing more than to transform your joy of attending seminary into an intellectual snobbery that renders you ineffective in ministry. Guard your heart against this paralyzing pride. Weeds grow next to the flowers. The flowers are blooming at seminary. The question is: will you choke out the weeds of pride in your heart or will the weeds choke out a lifetime of fruitfulness?

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3. I love quite a bit about Portland. Sure the rain gets a little old, but there’s a lot to appreciate about the city. Check out this incredible video highlighting Portland.

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Happy Friday!

Being in school, working full-time, and finding creative space to write consistently doesn’t leave a lot of margin in my week to seek out relationships that can be the launching point for deeper and truer community in my life and their lives. So I’ve struggled with this feeling of wanting to make and continue developing meaningful friendships in the midst of knowing I have very little time to offer to that endeavor.

Recently my sister called to talk with Rose and I. As the phone rang I felt this incredible urge to run away from the phone. I told Rose I didn’t want to talk and after a quick 10 second argument, Rose agreed to answer the phone while I sat on the couch. This is my sister who I hadn’t talked to in over a month, even I was confused as to why I had no desire or energy to spend time with her. After thinking about this while Rose was on the phone I realized I had been around people, in conversations, the entire day. As an “INTJ” I was spent. I had nothing left in the tank, not even for my sister.

Community isn’t easy and I often find it especially difficult for my more introverted disposition. However, God still calls all people toward the difficulty of relationships for the sake of formation of community. I ran across a truly profound statement from professional golfer and Portland native Ben Crane, who had this to say about the relationships he has on the PGA Tour with other golfers:

People ask me what’s the highlight of your career. For me it’s not like a victory, it’s doing it with my friends and family and doing it for the right reasons, which is to glorify God.”

We bring glory to God by fostering true community with our lives and by inviting others to experience the true life found in them through God’s presence.

But none of this is easy. With roughly half the population being more introverted, and Western cultures promoting values of independence and autonomy, it’s no wonder so many of us would describe community as fleeting.

Deep Community is an Outcome of a Deep Reality Within

Community does not fall out of the sky. It does begin somewhere. Relationship with others flows out of a relationship with God. It is that deep-seated relationship ongoing between the believer and God that allows for sustainable relationships with others.

The security we have in our “deep reality within” or assurance of faith through our relationship with God allows us to enter into relationships with others without looking for them to save us or make our lives better.

Community With Others is Not the End

This should be fairly straight forward. Community with God is the end and while community outside ourselves with others is an outcome, it is not the end. Community is the first step beyond ourselves, but so often community can become an insular group of alike people who no longer desire to look beyond themselves.

True Community Welcomes People For Who They Are

As I look back on the communities I’ve been fortunate to be a part of, one common denominator is that I always felt accepted for who I was. I was able to bring my pains, my baggage, my past–all of it to the table where people would welcome me and help me work through them.

Too often we welcome people into our communities in spite of who they are and what they’ve done. I think God calls us to welcome people with full recognition of who they are, knowing that through God’s presence in our relationship with them, God will begin to heal them.

My friend Rhett Smith had this to say in his new book:

All relationships have the possibility of refining us more and more to reflect the image of God, helping us reach our fullest potential that we could not otherwise achieve alone (pg 150).

I wish community was easier, but it’s worth the struggle.

The best art draws us closer to God, allowing us to see His face a little bit clearer, a little bit nearer than before.

The best art moves us from one place to another.

The best art changes us by giving us a new lens in which we can engage with the world.

Over the past few months I’ve engaged in several different types of art that have moved me in a significant way. Some of the pieces I’ve talked about on this blog or other social media outlets, some I haven’t talked much about it. Certainly there is no universal piece of art that moves each and every one of us, but I hope this short list will encourage you to make time and space for engaging with great art, the kind of art that moves you.

One Thousand Gifts

I read this book as I was finishing my own book manuscript, as a challenge to write with more descriptive and emotive language. I didn’t grow up reading a lot (I played sports and chased after girls) so I’m not the best gauge of this, but with that said I have never read a better word-picture writer than Ann Voskamp. This offering of hers is a beautiful portrait of faith in the midst of a shattered life.

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Of Gods and Men

This is the true story of Trappist monks living in a remote area of Algeria in the 1990s. Serving the neighboring communities of primarily Muslims, the monks choose to stay in the midst of extreme war going on around them for the sake of the people who would die without the help of the monks. It’s a heartbreaking and challenging movie to watch. The conversations they have around the table as they make decisions as a group are profound. The movie shows a different level of neighborly love than I find myself willing to give.

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Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

I have just recently been introduced to Madeleine L’Engle’s writing, but this book was a blessing to me. Here’s a few of many, many quotes I took away from reading this book:

“The unending paradox is that we learn through pain.”

“God must be very great to have created a world which carries so many arguments against his existence.”

“I have a point of view. You have a point of view. But God has a view.”

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All Sons and Daughters

I love the simplicity of their music and yet the tenacity it has in the midst of the simplicity. I love the honesty. I think you will love those things too.

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What art has moved you lately?

I recently read Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson, the guy most known for writing The Message translation or paraphrase of the Bible.

Over the past few years in seminary I’ve grown to respect Peterson more and more. He’s the antithesis of the celebrity pastor where pastors tour and lead incredibly large organizations. Peterson lives in a small Montana town and has never led a large church. He’s devoted to the discipline of study, writing, and running—all things I care about being consistently devoted to.

But this post isn’t about Peterson, as encouraging as his life, writing, and pastoral ministry is to me, this is about something he wrote in that book, Working the Angles.

I’ve taken several classes on bible study, even one class titled “Bible Study Methods.” 95% of my seminary education has taught me that good bible study is all about good exegetical work in preparation for leading individuals or groups through a passage of Scripture.

In all of those hours of reading outside of class and listening to lectures in class nothing has stuck out to me like what Peterson shares about Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch spoken of in Acts 8 (read the whole passage here).

Philip has to make a choice: will he stand alongside the chariot, providing information and answering questions about Scripture, exegetical work that comes easily for him, or will he involve himself in a spiritual quest with this stranger? Will I? It is the difference between the shopkeeper who sells maps of the wilderness and the person who goes with you into it, risking the dangers, helping to cook the meals, and sharing the weather. Philip decides on hodegesis (to guide). He climbs into the chariot and shares the journey.

I don’t know about you, but far too often I don’t look at studying the Scriptures with others as a sharing of the journey. So often I view myself as the master imparting knowledge to others.

So often I’m the shopkeeper selling maps of the outside wilderness while staying in my comfortable shop never risking the adventure of going on a hike with those who are exploring.

Will we involve ourselves in the spiritual quests and explorations of others?

Stop selling maps.

Go on hikes.