Designing for a Different Future: Pressure & Practices

By Andy Crouch and Dave Blanchard

Praxis
The Praxis Journal

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Andy Crouch is partner for theology and culture at Praxis. Dave Blanchard is co-founder and CEO of Praxis.

This material was premiered at the 2020 Praxis Redemptive Imagination Summit and is the first in a three-part series. Click here for the second part and click here for the third part.

Redemptive Edge podcast special episode: Andy Crouch and Dave Blanchard discuss the three-part essay series, “Designing for a Different Future,” in this episode.

Photo by Victor Lam on Unsplash

Since mid-March, and for even longer in some parts of the world, nearly everyone reading these words has been through a massive stress test for our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Half the world’s population has endured unprecedented lockdowns; most of us are either working from home, doing “essential” work under incredibly stressful conditions, or suddenly not working at all. The changes in our daily lives have been accompanied by a sudden awareness of imminent vulnerabilities, both medical and economic, and in many cases by personal grief and loss.

On top of all this, those of us who have leadership roles of any kind that give us responsibility for others and their flourishing — which includes parents and teachers as well as venture founders and funders — are having to care for systems, structures, and people under stress and facing uncertain futures.

In much of the world, the most acute “blizzard” phase of this crisis is ending. There is a welcome sense of relief and new possibilities. We are desperately eager to move on to some “new normal,” whatever exactly that will be.

But before we do, we would do well to reflect on what we’ve learned in the most acute phase of the crisis.

Physicians prescribe stress tests to patients with risk factors for cardiac disease to assess the real condition of their cardiovascular system. Since the 2008–2009 financial crisis, financial regulators have done the same for banks and systemically important financial institutions. What have we learned from the stress test we have all endured? And how can we become fit for the challenges ahead?

To help us reflect, it may help to draw on a few key ideas that have shaped our work at Praxis — ideas that can also shape our own choices and practices in whatever lies ahead.

Suffering, Withdrawal, and Control

For a number of years we’ve introduced each class of Praxis accelerator Fellows to a simple 2×2 that describes a path to human flourishing, and the ways that flourishing can be frustrated and distorted. We believe that “the life that really is life” is found when we are high in both authority (capacity for meaningful action) and vulnerability (exposure to meaningful risk).

This way of looking at life and leadership sees vulnerability not as something to be avoided or minimized at all costs, but something to actually be pursued, as long as it is meaningful and not meaningless, and as long as it is combined with real agency. This is certainly the life of entrepreneurship at its best, and indeed, we believe, of all human lives at their fullest potential.

But of course much of our lives are not lived “up and to the right,” and the most common distortion of human flourishing happens when vulnerability outweighs authority — when we face risk and loss with no ability to act in a meaningful way. We call this quadrant Suffering, and in the past few weeks we have all experienced some measure of this combination of loss and paralysis, risk and immobility.

The Suffering quadrant is universal to humankind, of course. Every person experiences it both sooner and later. And because of the damaging effects of sin, idolatry, and injustice, many human beings live almost their whole lives in this reality, never tasting the flourishing for which they were made.

But for those who experience Suffering as an episode rather than the fundamental script of their own and their community’s lives, the response is almost always to flee, if possible, to the left side of the graph: to either Withdrawal or Control.

If we are honest, many of us have spent quite a bit of time in these two quadrants in the last several weeks. Withdrawal is the option of simply minimizing one’s responsibility and risk, often by revisiting the safety we experienced, or wish we had, in our childhood. Some of our Withdrawal responses are almost unconscious and involuntary — many of us have found ourselves sleeping far more than at any time in our adult lives. Some involve choosing easy default options — there has been a huge resurgence, grocers report, in “comfort foods” that are easy to prepare and that recall the simple pleasures of childhood. Entertainment is a principal refuge of Withdrawal — would we have actually chosen to watch every episode of “Tiger King” at our healthiest and most flourishing?

Others have headed toward the Control quadrant to deal with the out-of-control nature of our times. We have been tempted to read incessantly, to “master” subjects like epidemiology in order to have a clear line of sight for what is coming next. Addictions and other compulsive behaviors are the classic results of a quest for control, and sometimes withdrawal as well — it’s not hard to see the dramatic rise in alcohol consumption in the US, the extra glasses of wine that many of us have been tempted to indulge in nightly, as both a withdrawal into pleasure and a way of regaining a sense of untroubled authority. In newly close quarters with family and housemates, we find our tempers much shorter than normal when others don’t conform to our expectations. And many of us who have leadership roles have found ourselves awake at all hours of the night, compulsively rehearsing scenarios and upcoming decisions and conversations, unable to rest in God’s trustworthiness and provision for us while we sleep.

All these dynamics were present before the Covid-19 crisis, to be sure — but just as the stress test reveals the underlying disease that might have initially presented as a fairly minor symptom, so this crisis has shown that we are far from being the persons, friends, family members, and leaders that we want to be. If the crisis were just a “blizzard” that is going to pass quickly, allowing us to return to normal, we might be able to ignore the results of this test. But if we are entering into an enduring season of new challenges, it would be wise to use this chance to diagnose the true state of our heart and accept a prescription and a training plan for improved health in the coming weeks and months.

Diagnostic Results

This is exactly the moment when we need a rule of life — a concise diagnosis of the areas where we are most likely to buckle under stress, and a prescription of a way of life that can actually heal and strengthen us for the journey ahead. The remarkable thing about a rule of life, like all spiritual disciplines, is that it actually functions as both diagnosis and prescription — that is, it helps us accurately identify the areas of illness and at the very same time helps us recover.

We believe the Praxis Rule of Life for Redemptive Entrepreneurs can play exactly this kind of role for us right now. A full array of our temptations to both withdrawal and control are diagnosed by the six areas of the Rule, and a better way is laid out for us as well:

Time: We may have found ourselves working obsessively, hoping to determine outcomes that are actually beyond our control — or found ourselves compelled to “serve” our organizations at great cost to our families and our health, refusing to let up the pace. The only remedy is a dramatically strengthened practice of Sabbath, rhythms of work and rest built on a weekly day entirely away from work, in order to free us from using every minute as an opportunity to shore up our sense of control.

Money: Even if we have maintained our pre-crisis levels of giving, we may notice that money is consuming far more of our attention. If we used to check the public markets weekly, we are checking them daily, or several times a day. Maybe our discretionary consumption has slowed down temporarily, but this is not a newfound discipline of simplicity — rather it is out of a fearful sense that our lifestyle is suddenly way out over the skis of our financial prospects. The best remedy is a new level of detachment from our personal financial situation, aided by new disciplines of generosity.

Imagination: If there is any area where we’ve found ourselves overwhelmed, it’s probably this one, as we’ve chased more and more breaking news, stuffing the beginning and ending of our day with information. In a quest for relief we may have turned to entertainment options that we never would have considered in less stressful times. Meanwhile, we’ve been missing out on the real remedy: the ancient ways of prayer and the role of deep reading of Scripture in recentering our minds and hearts.

Decision-making: Facing the need for rapid action, we may have found ourselves crowding out the Spirit, who so often speaks quietly and without hurry. We’ve made decisions hastily and anxiously, just at the time where we need divine guidance the most. We need a fresh commitment to “getting neutral” and surrendering our hopes and fears to God before we try to address them through our own action. It may well be that from God’s point of view, we have much less need to hurry now than we think — even as from God’s point of view, the stakes were more urgent than we thought when life seemed “normal.”

Power: Suddenly aware of new dimensions of vulnerability, sharing or delegating power may seem like the last thing we are inclined to do. We are tempted to pull up the ladders and concentrate all the power we have in ourselves, justifying control as the only way to survive. But the remedy may actually be to share power in much more radical ways, releasing others to rise up with creative energy in these new circumstances.

Community: Even though our vocations may involve public life and lots of relationships, most leaders have a strong introverted side. The lockdown has given many of us some much-needed solitude — indeed, we may be secretly grateful to be free of some of the social demands of our previous life and work. But it also has tempted us toward an isolation from which we are finding it surprisingly hard to break free. The narrowing of our relational world has especially put us at risk of missing out on the hard conversations that are the essence of real accountability. The extra difficulty of building trust through virtual media means we have been tempted to retreat into a homogenous group of like-minded fellow travelers, rather than seeking out diversity of thought and cross-cultural relationships in the midst of shared need.

You’re Gonna Need a Rule

Now is the time to recommit ourselves to the practices that will help diagnose our tendency to withdrawal and control, and form us into people who can fully participate in redemptive work in the world. Because in the long run, even though they are understandable responses to suffering, withdrawal and control undermine each of the core elements of redemptive work as we understand it at Praxis, as creative restoration through sacrifice:

While true rest can energize our creativity, withdrawal simply depletes it further — and because real creation always involves risk, including the risk of giving new freedom to others, control always inhibits creation.

Withdrawal almost always involves a resignation to “the way things are” that is the very opposite of restoration, in which we envision a way for things to be as they should be — and control, for those who benefited from previous systems even if they were unjust, almost always seeks to go back to “the way things were” rather than changing broken systems.

And it goes without saying that if sacrifice is the path to real creative restoration, neither those languishing in withdrawal nor those clinging to control will ever willingly choose that path.

So our first task, as we step out of the blizzard into the conditions of a wintry season and possibly a permanently changed climate, is to become the kinds of people who can give ourselves, not just in ambition or aspiration, but with actual authority and capacity, to the work of creative restoration through sacrifice. What practices do we need to commit to, or recommit to, in light of the hard truths we’ve learned about ourselves in the crucible of suffering? What will help us become the people we know we are meant to be? And whom do we trust enough to ask them to help us get there? Answering these questions, and acting on the answers, will prepare us for leadership in winter, and beyond.

The Rule in One Page

Time

Instead of endless productivity, we practice a rhythm of work and rest, attending to our need to grow in all the dimensions of being human: heart, soul, mind, and strength. We commit to take one full day every week for complete rest from our daily work, and to make Sabbath possible for everyone within our sphere of authority.

Money

Instead of being preoccupied with money and possessions, we practice simplicity and generosity. We commit to give away a minimum of 10% of our gross income, with special attention to the needs of the materially poor.

Imagination

Instead of having our imagination saturated by media, we seek to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. We commit to establish structured limits for our use of screens and our consumption of entertainment, in quantity, frequency, and moral character.

Decision-Making

Instead of willful autonomy in decision making, we practice active dependence on God. We commit to daily prayer, and at times of major decisions, making every effort not to proceed until we have actively submitted our own desires about the decision fully to the will of God.

Power

Instead of accumulating power to benefit ourselves or exploit others, we use it to generate possibility for those who have less access to opportunity. We commit to the practice of gleaning — frequently sacrificing opportunities for our own advancement to intentionally create pathways for others. We also practice chastity and fidelity, honoring the men and women with whom we work.

Community

Instead of individualism and isolation, we practice real presence with others who are not part of our daily work. We pursue diversity across class and ethnicity in our friendships and mentoring relationships.

This material was premiered at the 2020 Praxis Redemptive Imagination Summit and is the first in a three-part series. Click here for the second part.

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