The Inspiration We Need to Be Renewed in Lent

A few weeks after the world went into lockdown, my wife bought us access to the website MasterClass.  I largely ignored it until I saw an advertisement a few weeks ago for one of their courses by Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator.  His class on negotiations is one of the top-rated series on the website – and for good reason. What struck me about his methods was how much they synched with many core Christian values – empathy, compassion and patience. Amazingly, these virtues are key to a good and productive negotiation. One could easily walk away from his class thinking that St. Paul would have made a fabulous negotiator.

Getting on a bit of a MasterClass kick, I next watched a course entitled “Leadership Secrets of Great Presidents” by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. One of the principal takeaways was that emotional intelligence is of paramount importance in terms of leadership.  Some of the best examples of emotional intelligence just happen to come from those presidents who overcame great adversity in their lives.  Goodwin focuses principally on Lincoln and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt.  By coincidence, I had also spent a lot of time studying these same presidents about a year ago when I was coming to grips with the death of my oldest son.

Inspirational Examples

Being a historian by academic training, I started looking for historical examples of people who had lost a child or overcome some kind of similar tragedy as a way of trying to make sense of what had happened.  As the Internet seems to be skewed much more toward modern American history (at least English language search results are), I mostly found references to Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Eisenhower, and JFK.

Among the many adversities in life that Lincoln faced was that he lost a child, which according to the record, was one of the most devastating blows of his arduous life and almost drove his spouse insane.  Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother on the same day and spent two years in the badlands coming to terms with his grief.  Franklin Roosevelt, as most people know, was crippled by polio when he was thirty-two and never walked again.  Eisenhower lost his oldest son when his child was three years old.  JFK lost his older brother in the war.

The common thread in the stories of all of these presidents was that adversity and indescribable loss resulted in a depth of empathy, compassion and wisdom that helped them to do great things.  Instead of turning bitter, resentful or vengeful, they became better people because of tragedy in their lives.  Put another way, as Goodwin states, quoting Hemingway, “we are all broken by life, but some of us become stronger in those broken places.”  While I found that Hemmingway never actually wrote this line, it is still worth quoting on its own merits.

Strength Found in Weakness

In revisiting these presidents’ stories, what struck me, especially in light of the readings at the beginning of Lent, was the how much they exemplified what God seems to be calling us to become – something incredibly strong through humility, compassion and empathy, or put another way, true Christians.

After I lost my son, it became clear that change was inevitable in my life.  I couldn’t do much about that fact, but I did have a choice about what I did with that change.  I do not know if I am stronger or more compassionate or more empathetic because of what happened, but I know that I should be and want to be.  More broadly, in the context of the current season, we are all called by God to become better people.

How did Lincoln and the Roosevelts do it?  Seemingly through self-discipline, humility and a transformation that gave them something larger than themselves for which to live.

Individual Journeys of Healing

Lincoln provides the example of self-discipline.  According to Goodwin, he used to write “hot letters” which were emotion-laden notes that he wanted to send to someone who had wronged him.  He would lay aside the hot letter, and then come back and write the more constructive and, one could argue, Christian, correspondence that showed the patience, fortitude, and empathy for which he was famous.

FDR in the most abject sense embodied humility, although his famous grin would never give the casual viewer this sense.  Goodwin tells that he had to practice dragging himself and crawling as best he could back and forth across a room in order to build his arm muscles so that he could just hold himself upright.

All three men were transformed “by the renewing of their minds” (Ephesians 4:23) as it were, in the service of something higher and greater than themselves.  This transformation didn’t happen when they were in the White House, but long before, when they were largely obscure figures who once may have had a bright future, or were written off as people who would never amount to much.

Lincoln was so despondent that he became suicidal, yet in this darkness, he found himself and the will to serve humanity.  In the badlands, Theodore Roosevelt developed a new sense of purpose.  Through the loss of his ability to walk, Franklin Roosevelt found compassion for others and dedicated himself to alleviating suffering and making life worth living for other polio victims.

Only God Knows the Future

The path to the White House was not clear for any of these men at the point of their greatest suffering, but the groundwork in terms of their character had been laid.  Out of tragedy, the broken bone became the strongest part of each of them. In overcoming their grief, they became bigger, their lives became about something more, they died to themselves in a certain way. They were not conformed to the world but rather changed the world for the better.  In dying to themselves, to their own ambitions, to their own vanity, they were reborn.

Putting the matter in more mundane terms, the plans that they had made for their lives – their dreams – went out the window.  But by summoning the strength and courage to go beyond the natural inclination to self-pity, resentment, and anger at what had befallen each of them, they realized a much greater destiny, which was borne in large part from faith in God.

Lenten Self-Renewal

Anyone can become angry and frustrated and rant. The internet is full of anonymous and faceless screeds that are likely a catharsis for the writers who are responding to the injustice of the world as they see if, or the injustice of life individually visited upon them – a lost job, a death, an illness.

We have wonderful examples in the history of this nation of people who made a great difference in the life of the world through, and despite, their own humiliation, despair, and brokenness.  We are all called to be the same in this beautiful season of Lent, to be transformed, to be renewed, and resurrected through our pain and our brokenness.  This is the great promise of our faith.  What may seem the end of our dreams is only the beginning of God’s work to make us something much more glorious.  Lent is a wonderful time to scrape off the dross that would keep us from being transformed by God into what He knows us to be – something greater, stronger, more beautiful and perfected in Him.