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Beyond the False Choice

Two questions haunt every human life and every human community. The first: What are we meant to be? The second: Why are we so far from what we’re meant to be?

Human beings have an indelible sense that our life has a purpose—and a dogged sense that we have not fulfilled our purpose. Something has gone wrong on the way to becoming what we were meant to be, individually and together.

The first question exposes the gap in our own self-­understanding, our half-formed sense that we are meant to be more than we know. How can we have such a deep sense of purpose but find ourselves unable to easily name or grasp that purpose? Yet this is the human condition.

The second question exposes the gap between our aspirations and our accomplishments, between our hopes and our reality, between our reach and our grasp. If the first question gives voice to our greatest hopes, the second brings to the surface our deepest regrets. Having both great hopes and great regrets is also, alas, the human condition.

In this book I offer a way of answering both of these questions. It’s simple enough to explain in a minute or two of conversation, or in a page or two of a book—it’s coming up in just a few pages, and you’ll grasp its essence almost immediately. You’ll see it in action in your friendships, your workplace, your family and your favorite TV show or movie—you’ll find it in the pages of Scripture and in the most mundane moments of day-to-day life. You’ll see it in the most horrifying contexts of injustice and exploitation, and in the most inspiring moments of compassion and reconciliation.

Many simple ideas are simplistic—they filter out too much of reality to be truly useful. This one is not, because it is a particular kind of simple idea, the kind we call a paradox. It holds together two simple truths in a simple relationship, but it generates fruitful tension, complexity and possibility. I’ve come to call it the paradox of flourishing.

“Flourishing” is a way of answering the first great question, What are we meant to be? We are meant to flourish—not just to survive, but to thrive; not just to exist, but to explore and expand. “Gloria Dei vivens homo,” Irenaeus wrote. A loose—but by no means inaccurate—translation of those words has become popular: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” To flourish is to be fully alive, and when we read or hear those words something in us wakes up, sits up a bit straighter, leans ever so slightly forward. To be fully alive would connect us not just to our own proper human purpose but to the very heights and depths of divine glory. To live fully, in these transitory lives on this fragile earth, in such a way that we somehow participate in the glory of God—that would be flourishing. And that is what we are meant to do.

Every paradox requires that we embrace two things that seem like opposites. The paradox of flourishing is that true flourishing requires two things that at first do not seem to go together at all. But in fact, if you do not have both, you do not have flourishing, and you do not create it for others.

Here’s the paradox: flourishing comes from being both strong and weak.

Flourishing requires us to embrace both authority and vulnerability, both capacity and frailty—even, at least in this broken world, both life and death.

The answer to the second great question—Why are we so far from what we’re meant to be?—is that we have forgotten this basic paradox of flourishing, which is the secret of being fully alive. Actually, we haven’t just forgotten it, as if we had misplaced it absentmindedly. We’ve suppressed it. We’ve hidden it. We’ve fled from it. Because we fear it.

I used to think that what we feared was vulnerability—the “weak” part of the paradox. But in the course of writing this book and talking with many others about the paradox of flourishing, I’ve realized that we fear authority too. The truth is that we are afraid of both sides of the paradox of flourishing—and we especially fear to combine them in the only way that really leads to real life, for ourselves and others.

This book is about how to embrace the life for which we were made—life that embraces the paradox of flourishing, that pursues greater authority and greater vulnerability at the same time.

But most of all, this book is about a picture, the simplest and best way I know to explore the paradox of flourishing. It’s really just a sketch, the kind of thing you can draw on a napkin, but it will give us plenty to think about for the rest of this book (see figure 1.1).

It’s one of my favorite things: a 2x2 chart.

The Power of the 2x2

There’s nothing I find quite as satisfying as a 2x2 chart at the right time. The 2x2 helps us grasp the nature of paradox. When used properly, the 2x2 can take two ideas we thought were opposed to one another and show how they complement one another.

The world is littered with false choices. The leadership writers Jim Collins and Scott Porras talk about “the tyranny of the OR and the genius of the AND.” Should products be low cost or high quality? Whom do managers serve, their investors or their employees? The most transformative companies manage both. Are we the products of our nature or our nurture? They are not opposites—they have to go together.

The Christian world has its own versions: Is the mission of the church evangelism and proclamation or is it justice and demonstration? Are we supposed to be conservative or radical, contemplative or active, set apart from the world or engaged in the world? Or take the topic that almost generated the first great biblical 2x2 chart. Is the life of the Christian about faith or works? (“Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you a 2x2 chart of my faith and works”—James 2:18, my take on the original Greek!) Then you’ll be ready for the ultimate question: Was Jesus of Nazareth human or divine? Was he Son of Man or Son of God?

In all these cases, what we need is not a linear “or” but a two-dimensional “and” that presses us to see the surprising connections between two things we thought we had to choose between—and perhaps even to discover that having the fullness of one requires that we have the fullness of the other.

One of the best examples comes from studies of effective parenting—the kind of parenting that produces children who display self-confidence and self-control. Which is better, to be a strict, demanding parent who sets firm boundaries, or a responsive, engaging parent who interacts with their children with warmth and compassion? If you were a parent, where on this spectrum would you want to be (see figure 1.2)?

Put the question this way and most parents will lean one way or the other. Some will quote Proverbs—“spare the rod, spoil the child”—and opt for firmness (see Proverbs 13:24). Others will quote Paul—“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger”—and opt for warmth (see Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21).

Both are right.

Firmness and warmth, it turns out, are not actually opposites. They can go together—in fact, they must go together for children to flourish. Their relationship is much better shown with a 2x2 (see figure 1.3).

Map firmness and warmth this way, and you quickly discover that either one, without the other, is poor parenting. Firmness without warmth—authoritarian parenting—leads eventually to rebellion. Warmth without firmness—indulgent parenting—leads eventually to spoiled, entitled brats.

In fact, there aren’t just two ways to be a bad parent—there are three! The worst of all is parenting that is neither warm nor firm—absent parenting (see figure 1.4).

There is a difference, it turns out, between being nice and being kind. “Nice” parenting drifts down to the bottom right, settling for easy, warm feelings without ever setting high expectations. Kind parenting manages to be clear and firm while also tender and affectionate. Psychologists call it authoritative parenting rather than authoritarian. The best parenting, in our 2x2, is up and to the right.

There are a few more insights hidden in this simple diagram. I’ve numbered the quadrants using Roman numerals I to IV, starting with the ideal quadrant up and to the right and continuing around clockwise—in the same order and direction we’ll consider them for the next four chapters. Consider the line from the top left to the bottom right, from quadrant IV (Authoritarian) to quadrant II (Indulgent), from firmness without warmth to warmth without firmness.

Remember our one-dimensional line with warmth on the left and firmness on the right? In practice, if that is your mental model of parenting, you’ll end up becoming either authoritarian (firmness without warmth) or indulgent (warmth without firmness). The IV-II line describes...