CONVERSION NARRATIVE
Wandering & Wondering: Recanting with Abe Maslow
Preston D. Probasco, Ph.D.,
Professor, Organization & Management Dept.
College of Business, San Jose State University
ABSTRACT
As a young professor previously exposed
first-hand to Abraham Maslow and his humanistic psychologist
colleague, Carl Rogers, my search for meaning was limited by similarly
humanistic/naturalistic colleagues. Unbeknownst to me then, Maslow and Rogers
recanted about over-promoting what
overly avid disciples adopted with unwarranted certainty, namely the
substitution of secular self actualization and New Age self transcendence for
being made truly alive together with
Christ (Eph. 2:5).
Self-sufficiency
(a.k.a. "illusion of control" by cognitive psychologists like Bazerman, 2001,
who warn about unrealistically positive views of the self) along with such
derivatives as the illusions of an autonomous and even morally "superior" self,
where I did not realize the extent of my need for others much less God, led to
my "valley of humiliation" (marriage failure and realizing my need for
Christ). "Pre-evangelical"
interventions, terrific bible study opportunities, a great post-conversion
Christian remarriage, and recent efforts at mapping my fields of organizational
behavior and business ethics onto the biblical Christian worldview helps me now
see how so many earlier experiences were being used by God as valuable
"pointers to ultimacy" foreshadowing Christ's reality. In my previously restless wanderings I
was gradually outgrowing the substitutes for the truth about my calling and
identity in Christ, a deeper
belongingness to God and others, and that sense of wonder and peace that only
God Himself could fulfill.
Overview
of Conversion's Meaning for Me. After writing my conversion narrative I compared mine with
not only C.S. Lewis' but with those from a large sample in late 18th
century England who like me were socialized as nominal Protestant Christians
prior to the point of their conversion.
Since Bruce Hindmarsh catalogued these conversions near the time of
Wesley's and Whitfield's revival ministry when there was a strong sense of self
determination and an introspective conscience about our own mortality, I sensed
that his three generalizations about "Gospel Narrative Identity: The Stories
Evangelicals Tell" (1999) would apply to me, a 67 year-old product of "The Book
of Common Prayer" as I followed it in my own strength in an Episcopal Parish
that had its roots at least in England if not in Methodism.. Consequently, what follows is loosely
mapped-onto what emerged as three markers of authentic conversion: (1) specificity, (2) connectivity, and
(3) self-transcendence. Specificity refers to how customized our Father's workmanship (Eph.
2:10) is with each of us, such that the gospel connects with our deepest
idiosyncratic longings. Amazingly
He remakes our identities accompanied by varying lag times between awakening
our consciences through breaking us ("sorrowful bewilderment") and redeeming us
through His Son ("joyous bewilderment").
Secondly, He connects us to a real community of believers that is bestowed by Him, not constructed by
us. This new family exposes the
futility of the self-designed, autonomous self as having any lasting
value. It also coincides with the
gospel being the means of true self transcendence as the third generalization about conversion
narratives. "Will there be
anything left of me if I give up my life to Him" is one of the questions we
have during the aforementioned interval between His awakening of our
consciences and the assuaging of our conscience by way of a new, bestowed
identity in Christ. Eventually we
realize our unique conversion experience is part of a meta-narrative of God's
story of creation, the fall, and Christ's redemption waiting to be written on
our hearts (Hindmarsh, 2005).
As a
young organizational behavior professor who had first-hand exposure to Abraham
Maslow and his humanistic psychologist colleague, Carl Rogers, I was tribally reinforced by my
colleagues for applying their notions to self-directed teamwork. Unbeknownst to
me until well after my own mid-life marital crisis, near the end of his life
Maslow and then Carl Rogers both recanted about over-promoting the self-actualization claims that their overly avid
disciples adopted with unwarranted certainty (Lowry, 1979). While I am also regretful for teaching
as much of Maslow and Rogers' notions as I did and I recant of making
psychology and naturalism my religion (Vitz,1977), what I repented of during my
sabbatical in the fall of 1976 was my subtly arrogant "I can understand and fix
anything" attitude (evident by my favorite childhood expression "I know!"). My nice guy cover-up for this attitude
seems just as subtly destructive as my underlying sin of pride.
Raised
and socialized as a "hot-house" nominal Christian, my conversion was born out of realizing the futility of self-sufficiency. A gradual process of interiorization of
Maslow's autonomous self (largely due to my own efforts, not Maslow's) had led
to my "valley of humiliation" to coin a C.S. Lewis (1956) phrase (marriage
failure as a supposedly knowledgeable behavioral scientist who didn't admit his
need for Christ's life within to fill the vacuum caused by worshiping the
created rather than the creator).
I further realize now that the secular naturalistic mindset of Maslow
and his colleagues Carl Rogers & Richard Farson at the Western Behavioral
Sciences Institute had a subtle hand in normalizing my polite willfulness and glamorizing my implicit New Age universalism that prompted further dabbling even in Joseph Campbell's (1949)
psychological version of mythology as a dose of "supersaturated truth." Coached by Dyson & Tolkien in
Lewis' mythological studies to recognize how myths foreshadowed the reality of
Christ, my exposure instead to Joseph Campbell and Maslow obscured or omitted
such "pointers to ultimacy." The biblical parallel that comes to
mind are the secular life experiments run by king Solomon in Ecclesiastes,
written by Solomon as if God had not spoken, just to find out for himself what
worked (albeit for the short run and how incomplete and ultimately empty that
was for the long run, Probasco, 2004).
While I
now love considering my academic discipline from a biblical Christian worldview, my conversion was not a well thought-out worldview
conversion. It was triggered by interpersonal
realities like my first marriage that
needed more attention than the "publish or perish" mill. I can relate to the "sorrowful
bewilderment" (Hindmarsh, 1999) of being
blind-sided by my wife's rejection of seemingly my very core, in part because
she too was sorrowful for falling out of love and knowing that she would miss
at least my friendship if she divorced me. Another part of my sorrow, though, was being confronted with
the prospect of wondering if there would be anything left of my identity as a
husband if I surrendered my life to Christ...I vaguely recall wondering about
this before, during, and after the point of my conversion. While I did not cling to my identity as
a professor, I was still attached to a narrow, more occupationally determined
identity. It would take years for
Christ to transform my academic role into something He could use for His glory
instead of mine. Too much of my
identity had become a mixture of social identities that included not just my
occupation but also my leisure affiliations with sailing, gardening, sports
fan, body surfing, and the like.
There was a lot of ground to be plowed in all of these areas before I realized
my need to turn them over to His Lordship.
Returning
to the build-up to my conversion, reviewing a Harvard colleague's management
text (Athos, 1978) surprisingly espousing what appeared to be the spiritual
dimension then nudged me closer.
Brief, divinely appointed exhortations from two authentically Christian
relatives came next, one of whom was the uncle that raised me while the other
was my mother-in-law. There was
eventually an incredibly artistic, natural revelation element in a canopy-like desert sunrise. This occurred just days after I had
learned how to use a camera for nature photography on a solo sabbatical while
also taking time to ruminate about the
variety of interpersonal influences that were thankfully calling me homeward like Henri Nouwen describes so well in Rembrandt's
painting of the Return of the Prodigal (1992). In retrospect, father God customized this moment to get my attention through two of my
interests: nature as aesthetically experienced (especially plant life and
landscape architecture) and people as also inherently fascinating (interesting
friends, relatives, and colleagues).
At that point of conversion I do recall bewilderingly crying tears of
bittersweet joy. Since then, tears
of joy have somehow signaled gratitude for the divine influence of the kind
that the Holy Spirit is capable of.
All I knew then was that that was a long, contented drive across the
Arizona desert to my hometown of Coronado, thanking my Father for waiting so
patiently for me to finally accept the gift of His Son's sacrificial love for
me and my pride-stained condition.
By His
grace I gradually encountered Him and His perspective in increasing measure
with greater connectivity
through those who allowed "...the word of Christ (to) richly dwell within" (Col.
3:16). For the first time I felt
really free of the old self's subtle compulsions and experienced a qualitative
difference in gratitude for life itself now that I was actively relying on the
presence of the author of life Himself.
Sinking my roots deeper into the exchanged life of Christ a la Galatians
2:20 freed me to rely on His love and power to unselfconsciously fall into more
deeply appreciating people in ways that far transcended what my old self had done superficially B.C. (before
conversion) in its own strength.
The fellowship of believers eventually included an equally-yoked
marriage partner who would transform my superficial interpersonal attachments into
the kind of true intimacy and sense of adventure that only Christ Himself could
broker.
30
B.C. (Before Conversion). I was born and raised in two very
wholesomely loving families. The
second was born-out of a World War II pact with my mother's sister and her
husband should the hazardous South Pacific Navy duty leave either set of kids
fatherless. While my Christian
upbringing was well-intentioned, for me it seemed like I emerged as a "hot
house" nominal Christian; under-equipped to sustain a Christian biblical
worldview against deceptively attractive competing world views. I was neither an actively "professing"
Christian nor an authentic "possessing" Christian. Nevertheless, Christ patiently waited expectantly at the
narrow gate like the prodigal father until I had wandered off alone through an
array of much wider, more culturally "hip" gates.
Three and
a half decades later I had a born-again realization when I finally acknowledged
my need for Him whom I had taken for granted since confirmation as an
Episcopalian. Looking back on the
intervening lean years I can now appreciate His active involvement in a variety
of ways. I also recognize that
what was emerging as one of my greatest strengths (self-sufficient
perseverance) was bound to become one of my greatest weaknesses that God would
use to lovingly break me. This was
difficult to see coming because part of that self-sufficient reliance was a
determination to not let my post-polio condition get the best of me. Being a high school football player
when I contacted the complete paralysis of one leg and over 50% paralysis of
the other had made me mentally tough enough not to be held back by braces and
crutches. Having friendly,
adventurous role models at home, school, and at play furthered the
self-sufficiency interpersonally to the point where I was unaware of pending
difficulties in developing healthy interdependencies and connecting more deeply
with others. I was oblivious of
the following "We keep lapsing into ideas of self-sufficiency, or get impressed
with our niceness, and so we lose our humility. Those who do not ask do not receive, because they don't know
their own need" (Mathewes-Green, 2001).
Undergraduate
Pre-Evangelical Tug of War. What I was considering "spiritually"
during the lean years was influenced by humanism's chief prophet, Abraham Maslow. This was under girded by
four years worth of naturalism's
various proponents from Pomona College's liberal arts, Psychology program.
During this period of being slowly drawn toward morally relativistic belief
systems, there was just enough collegiate exposure to Christianity along with
the prayers of faithful family members
to prevent me from actively rebelling against the credible influence of at
least the social gospel. Prompted
by what I thought was just my own curiosity I decided to write my religious
studies term paper on the validity of
Christ's resurrection. Whatever skepticism I had going into
that research was squashed by a vast array of evidence. That came in handy later when I felt I
really needed Christ in my life.
Moreover, while doing my homework on a
different Old Testament assignment all alone in Honnold Library I recall how
contented I was. The subsequent
rush of other obligations crowded-out the realization that I was setting aside
our Lord's quiet nudging me toward a personal relationship with Him. I would find out that the new covenant
could be seen in the old testament many years later through the adventure of
being led to inductively examine the scriptures at Peninsula Bible Church here
in Palo Alto.
Humanistic
Influences: Academic and Personal. After
college, I was lured further away from whatever Christian moorings I had by a
glamorous summer internship at Western Behavioral Sciences Institute (later
renamed the Center for the Study of the Person because of Carl Rogers) in La
Jolla, Calif. I was primarily
engaged in secondary research on the behavioral aspects of nuclear deterrence
and decision making. As a bonus I
was invited to attend the informal Friday seminars led by Abraham Maslow
concerning his motivational findings on the healthiest, most self-actualizing
people he could find. This
included pioneering work with a Del Mar electronics firm (Solomon, 1962) willing
to scrap their machine-paced assembly line for a self-paced small team approach
to increased quality of work life and greater productivity. "Eupsychian Management" (1970) captured
these findings and later found its way into the reading list for one of my
earlier organizational behavior courses taught at San Jose State.
At one
Friday session Maslow was asked about the relevance of his interviews of
transcendent self-actualizers' "peak experiences" with the claims of authentic
Judaism or Christianity. Maslow (1971) seemed to dismiss the
seriousness of the inquiry by answering (approximate quote) "you can call it
evidence of divine revelation if you must, or, better yet as an expression of
your own creativity without any necessary dependence on a godhead." Tragically missing was the deeper
realization that peak experiences could be pre-evangelical "pointers to
ultimacy" such as the hope of the "exchanged life." "While he took seriously mystic experience, at least a
secular understanding of it," (Vitz, 1977), Maslow seemed to settle for the
human potential movement as a sufficient belief system without testing its
sustainability, nor the sustainability of his atheistic bent at the time.
Maslow
Recants. Unbeknownst to me until I contacted William R. Coulson's
work (Matzat, 1996, Coulson, 2006) well after my own mid-life marital crisis,
it was near the end of Maslow's life
that he, and later Carl Rogers (1977) as Maslow's colleague, both "recanted" in
their latest writings (reluctantly at first and never in public settings where
it would have counted) about over-promoting what their disciples adopted with
"an almost paranoid certainty of their own absolute virtues and correctness" (Lowry,
1979, Dec. 5, 1968 entry, The Journals of A. H. Maslow). Admitting that they had underestimated
the power of evil and downplayed the importance of tradition, authority
structures, community, delaying immediate gratification, etc. they both (Maslow
more than Rogers) wished they could pull-back their rash assertions about how that
self-actualization "stuff" was possible for everyone rather than the .5% Maslow
found later. "History and current
events ... must make my lectures sound like rosy dreams and wish fulfillments, no
matter how often I warn that I'm talking about the best one half of one percent."
(Lowry, 1979, Journals, entry of August 11, 1966). Moreover, in the preface to the second edition (1970) of his
"Motivation and Personality" he states"...self-actualization does not occur in
young people...they have not achieved identity, nor have they found their calling
(the altar upon which to offer themselves)...nor have they learned enough about
evil in themselves and others."
Maslow
recanted of over-promoting self-actualization in part to encourage his students
at Brandeis to return to intellectually more viable pursuits (Lowry, 1979). Maslow may have also been nudged back
toward his empirical roots by Carl Rogers who earlier had admired Maslow for
his new ideas but questioned Maslow's dedication to testing these ideas beyond
whether they just rang true as self-evident (Hart & Tomlinson, 1970). To
his credit, Maslow (Lowry, 1979) was dismayed that his hierarchy of needs
developed in the forties had been so little field tested by others before such
wholesale adoption, particularly by practitioners in the business
community. Amongst the subsequent
modifications of his hierarchy, the work of Goble (2004) in 1970 at least
reflects the complexity and time Maslow intuitively knew was required for true
maturity.
Finally,
in the last article written before his death (1970 and reprinted in the Journal
of Humanistic Psychology, 1979, as well as his journals (Lowry, 1979) commenting
on the severe authority crisis pervading all institutions, Maslow said
"...particularly intellectuals, must remain ambivalent about power whoever wields
it, even (and especially) when they themselves have authority." In an earlier May 28, 1967 journal
entry (Lowry, 1979, pp. 794-95) he admitted to at least himself the
following: "Self-actualization? I realized I'd rather leave it behind
me. Just too sloppy...going through
my notes brought this unease to consciousness. It's been with me for years. Meant to write and publish a self-actualization critique,
but somehow never did." This was
the same time period when Maslow privately admitted he had conflated goodness
with being self-actualized by "smuggling in" or reducing "ethics" to being characteristic
of the healthiest, most self-actualized people. He was also having private misgivings about Carl Roger's
client-centered therapy, worrying that his colleague Rogers was in the grip of
'democratic dogma'. (Lowry, 1979, p.848).
Recently
elected president of the American Psychological Assoc., he wanted too much to
remain a member much less leader of the club. Oct. 23, 1967, he was asked to give a luncheon talk at the
Plaza Hotel in New York City on "The Self Actualizing Manager." His journal entry of that date passed the
judgment that he "felt like a swindler." But he added, "they thought it was good." (Lowry, 1979, p. 832) He had his wife Bertha and a Christian
psychologist at a major University hide his journals for 9 years after his
death ostensibly because he was afraid of disillusioning followers who had
adopted the self actualizing worldview.
There is further hope by a few of his Christian colleagues that he may
have even converted to Christianity or at least theism near the end of his
life. As we can see with Judah in
Genesis, there is always the possibility of recovery in the program of
God. While Maslow as an avowed
atheist would have to wade through more cognitive dissonance than most, I too
see such hopeful signs as the way his conscience was being weighed down by the
responsibility of having misled others, his return to an earnest search for the
truth including an admiration for the work of Polanyi (1958), and seemingly an
identity-driven yearning for the "ultimate" in himself and others with the
added pressure of never having enough time to do it all in his own
strength.
Given
that Maslow himself did not lead a profligate lifestyle, he was disgusted by
those who sought such self indulgent short cuts to true self actualization as
the ring leaders at Esalen Institute (the Big Sur facility that he had helped
found to promote the development of the whole person). "They tend to be short-term, here now,
impatient, and do not realize that education, persuasion, becoming a good
person, and developing a good society, are all lifetime tasks requiring a large
segment of time." (Lowry, 1979). Soon
after joining the faculty at San Jose State in 1967 I signed-up for one of the
Esalen seminars using video taped feedback for their encounter group in the
meeting rooms and hot springs atop the craggy cliffs overlooking the Pacific
Ocean. I can attest firsthand as to
how seductive this kind of environment was for a bachelor like me at the time. It would be easy to substitute
self-indulgence as a short-cut to becoming a fully functioning, self-actualized
person and rely on the rhetoric of self actualization as a cover-up. To think that Maslow, 3 years later,
was seriously questioning the likelihood of attaining self actualization by
99.5 % of the population was unheard of by my colleagues in the organizational
development field (which is in part a derivative field of psychology). If Maslow had gone public with how he was
fast distancing himself from his Marxist Brandeis colleague Herbert Marcuse (1955)
at that time, it may have set back the cause of the anti-establishment,
socialistic demonstrations led by my more demonstrative colleagues the summer
after Maslow's recanting.
Preston
Recants. Before my conversion there was a part of me that held onto
the lure of the autonomous self that was being celebrated by the 60's counter
culture. It helped fill the God
shaped vacuum in a counterfeit way by involving me in causes larger than myself
which inoculated me against the need for the real thing, substituting,
e.g., self-righteousness
pleasantness for inclusive goodness, cleverness for wisdom, glamour for
dignity, and personality for character. Moreover, there always seems to be a kernel of truth in
naturalistic observations such as Maslow's. Particularly so was his prophetic evaluation of our
increasingly self-entitled society where he despaired of the lack of gratitude. "People's
lives were getting better and yet most seem to take their blessings for granted
and concentrate on finding new complaints" (Easterbrook, 2003). In retrospect, though, what he did not
grasp or transmit well enough that I needed was the distinction between the
false self that we need to let go of and the true self that we are to
actualize. It would take me years
to resist living out of a false center based on possessions, actions, or the
esteem of others...as well as realizing the self that needed to be actualized was
"the unique self that is found only in Christ and in the fullness of His life
in and through me." (Benner, 2002).
Also I
was considered special by my colleagues at San Jose State's College of Business
for having studied with Rogers for even one course and having been a Maslow
groupie in the Friday seminars at the La Jolla research institute for at least
the summer of 61. Consequently I
was spring-loaded to arrive on campus as a pagan champion for a variety of
humanistic applications to management, many of which survive to this day in a
morphed New Age, Zen, or ultra-naturalistic way as can be seen by the renewed
interest in Maslow's "Eupsychian Management" (1970). Even though the model company he used is bankrupt for a
variety of reasons, Maslow's practical observations about the application of
trust, teamwork, and recognition led Peter Drucker, one of the foremost management
authorities (only recently deceased), to say "this is by far Maslow's best
book...it had an enormous impact on me" (1997). As contrasted with purely individual autonomy, here one can
see the more sustainable advantages of autonomous work groups within the
constraints of accountability for bottom-line results, access to a floating
technical resource person, and up-line authority structures.
Consequently,
I need to be careful about what I recant of just as Maslow himself was
selective about the subjects of his recanting, e.g., self-actualization without
being responsible to others (even if he never intended to foster the license
and licentiousness that so shocked him years later at Esalen). Csikszentmihalyi's (1997) in his
continuing work with more relationally responsible "peak experiences" is
apparently unaware of Maslow's recant since he summarizes the glory days of the
mid 20th century as those where "...an optimistic haze blunted all edges,
and we permitted ourselves to believe that the only evil came from not
fulfilling one's potential."
Meanwhile
I was accruing a fair measure of guilt for joining-in on the fun of debunking
the military industrial state and adopting uncritically the views of the 60's
academic heroes like John Kenneth Galbraith and adding the creative but
somewhat rough community organizing tactics of Caesar Chavez's mentor Saul
Alinsky to the negotiating game lectures in my organizational behavior
course. Like Maslow I enjoyed too
much being a member of the club of mostly liberal colleagues (housed in a
College of Business with thankfully a few conservative professors who were
patiently waiting for me to run out of gas). Thankfully also my eventual conversion was not conflated
with socialistic or capitalistic beliefs, as even my presently conservative
capitalistic bent is just a judgment call based on what I construe as the lesser of two flawed systems
and the one most amenable to the development of a more ethical organizational
culture. The then liberal, utopian
bent was furthered by getting caught-up in the social engineering projects and
Master's theses as an advisor in the interdisciplinary Cybernetic Systems
Program originating in the School of Engineering. Since I was on loan for the equivalent of one course as
well, I was prompted to ill-advisedly advocate at least part of the agenda of
general systems theory as a worldview that kept me light years away from the
Jesus movement taking place in "my backyard" at Palo Alto's Peninsula Bible
Church. While I was involved in intrinsically
worthwhile systems analysis and systems modeling efforts by Jay Forester, the
Club of Rome, and the like, too much was expected of these tools in terms of
solving mankind's larger problems of war, poverty, quality of life, and
workplace compromises on quality and cover-ups of those compromises. At least they put a lid on the hysteria
surrounding Paul Ehrlich's overly simplistic projections regarding population
growth.
Finally,
Dember's (1991) conclusion after decades of research on complexity shows that
when faced with the need for sustained attention to excessive complexity with little perceived likliehood of changing the
circumstances responsible for the complexity, people tend to adopt an unexamined
ideology to attempt to regain some
semblance of control. The ideology
that I uncritically adopted was general
systems theory. It inoculated me
temporarily against the need for a more sustainable worldview like authentic
Christianity.
I regret
not seeing then what Dallas Willard in "The Spirit of the Disciplines" (1988)
refers to as the illusion of our age, i.e., that, rooted in an undisciplined
and unsatisfying life, searching for new information or social arrangements is
bound somehow to significantly reduce ethical lapses, "while letting us
continue to be and to live as we have since Adam." Instead, some of us enrolled in E.S.T. (Erhard Seminars
Training) to get "psyched-up" with warmed-over self-actualization approaches to
further such endeavors as organizational development consulting; simulated
problem solving efforts at Bucky Fuller's (1971) World Games; and architect Paolo
Soleri's (1969) visionary new ecologically-advanced city "construction" with
"sweat equity." All along the way
I remained oblivious to the importance of abstinence and engagement
"disciplines" as the age-old missing link in attaining such a deeply satisfying
life that distracting and potentially unethical temptations lose their hold on
our attention and we are freer to choose which projects are most edifying. In retrospect none of this "wandering"
was inherently wrong, but the motivation to honor God and have Him guide me
into greater "concentric diversification" was missing in action. I am sure He can use these experiences
to connect with those students or colleagues who seem to be drifting and may be
looking for involvements that have lasting value.
Flashback
to Remaining Academic Preparation. Programmed for intellectual and
experiential exploration I started under Carl Rogers & others @ Univ. of
Wisconsin's clinical psychology program.
What followed in grad school after switching out of clinical psychology
with its lucrative fellowship, now seems like a number of forays into
increasingly multi-disciplinary attachments in the fields of Social Psych &
then the Industrial Relations doctorate that eventually made me eligible for
appointment as an assistant professor at San Jose State's College of Business. My thesis advisor came from the
experimental psychology tradition that took great issue with any of the
clinical psychological tradition.
Research-wise I began to distance myself professionally from what the
experimentalists called "pop psychology" painting clinical psychology as
suspect with too wide a brush.
Unfortunately, the thesis work I completed at the Behavioral Cybernetics
Lab did not have legs enough at least for me to see its relevance for my
eventual academic assignment in a College of Business. Hence I did not experience the
customary bounce in terms of an ongoing stream of research that would
facilitate meeting the "publish or perish" demands of tenure and
promotion. This would sow the
seeds for an eventual marriage failure due to the time-consuming process of
starting a research program from scratch without ready mentors.
Self-Actualizing
Marriage Burnout. As I chose to spend more time pursuing
tenure and promotion to associate professor at San Jose State, I was gradually
losing touch with the wife whom I had met, a seemingly good pagan like myself, soon
after joining the faculty. One of
our first dates included attending a lecture by Rollo May (1969, part of the
same club that Maslow belonged to, albeit from more of an existentialist origin). Too much emotional capital had been burned
through by all of my "self-actualizing" projects, and her free-spirit jazz
vocalist background did little to preserve what capital remained.
By the
time I realized the problem, it was too late according to one of the secular
psychotherapists we had been seeing.
My wife's secret infidelity and subsequent filing for divorce and
remarriage, in spite of my last ditch efforts to win her back, had left me
confused, empty, and wondering where the self-actualized life had led us. What added insult to injury then was
the stereotyped impression left on my wife by another counselor she saw at San
Jose State that I was a typical egg-head academic driven by the need to
methodically test every possibility in his research and this was bound to turn
me into a dry and tedious person who would be hard to warm-up to. This now seems more like a convenient
rationalization that she could hold onto to justify her departure since
gratefully under her influence I had become more spontaneous and in-touch
emotionally. However, at a deeper
level my greatest strength (self-reliance and perseverance) had become my
greatest weakness as it had spawned too much autonomy and too little dependence
on her. Our marriage counselor
during her affair privately told me that if she ever changed her mind and came
back to me it would take 10-15 years!
Pre-Conversion
Beckonings. During a subsequent professional conference I visited my
boyhood home in Coronado.
Homecoming has always been special with my uncle and his wonderful
Proverbs 31 wife. This time was
helpfully confrontational. My
uncle was the first one to challenge the illusion of control that I had bought
into over the years. He simply
reminded me that none of us were designed to live alone without the God who had
created us in the first place. Soon after, I was asked to review a text by a
leading figure (Athos, 1978) in my field from Harvard whom I had just met at another
secular academic conference. While
he too had been heavily influenced by Rogers & Maslow, I was amazed to find
he had included an actual account of how a manager found relief from the
unnerving, subtly self-destructive compulsion to "do what was right in his own
eyes" by facing his issue as two of the 7 deadly "sins". I noticed that in the galley proofs
that I reviewed, he had placed this account right smack in the middle of the
book, while this was later placed in the appendix before publication. If my memory serves me right it also
seemed that the individual had been "born again." No matter that Anthony Athos apparently died recently as a
Zen advocate, God used him mightily to nudge me closer to a genuine conversion!
Conversion. In this time
period in the mid-70's I had tentatively begun going to a beginners' class at a
non-denominational, Bible-centered church, due in part to the gentle nudging of
my authentically Christian mother-in-law.
It made sense rationally but it would take a number of years for me to
fully appreciate the startling coalescence of God's inviolate justice with His
mercy and grace in the person of His Son.
My commitment to respecting His lordship (albeit in addition to mine
instead of in place of mine) was building. The pastor in charge of the adult elective had been on staff
at Campus Crusade for Christ. What
I took away then was his analogy of conversion as sometimes a rear-view
realization, much like driving through a new town without seeing the city
limits sign. Since my imagination
had not been fully engaged yet, this analogy was at least a start in getting me
intrigued.
About a
half year later, I visited an old air traffic controller friend of mine in
Flagstaff, Arizona. He introduced
me to photography as a hobby and let me borrow his camera while he and his wife
were at work. There was plenty to
explore with the drama of fall colors, contrasting patches of newly fallen
snow, and the play of light on a river bed that was coming alive again with
recently melted snow. On my way
home as I drove down the last time through Oak Creek canyon to the floor of the
desert I spotted through the sunroof of my old 504 Peugeot an early morning
sunrise as I drove out of Sedona that seemed to provide a complete canopy of varying
color and shape as far as the eye could see. Imagining God's redemptive presence in that sunrise, as well
as viewing earlier examples of His intricate design in my recent nature
photography, finally prompted me to welcome His saving work on the cross and
His sanctifying presence. I
committed to living my life for Him as well as with Him, keenly aware that
something was different but still not altogether sure how to articulate it all. A bittersweet sense of bewildering joy
brought tears of relief and hope for someone who could capture my attention in
ways far vaster than what I had settled for up to now and who could direct me
in ways far wiser than I could muster on my own.
Conversion's
Meaning for Me. Initially I simply languished in the relief and warmth on
that painted desert that my soul had finally come home...just a contented impression of more completeness than I could possibly get my mind
around. I was also feeling a great deal freer,
just for letting Him take the wheel.
Back then I did not know the full meaning of how the truth of His
redemptive work set me free from the power of sin and its deceptively enslaving
ways. I had lived for so long
without the far healthier dependence on the transforming power of Jesus... that
self-sufficiency had inoculated me against even wanting the truly abundant
life. This self-sufficiency and
how it had subtly undermined my relationships with my former wife and others was
a major besetting sin that I repented of.
Christ was the one whom I thanked for deep-sixing the guilt also about
over-promoting some of the same self actualizing "stuff" that Maslow (1979) regretted
near the end of his life. I had
been using enough subconscious energy to repress this guilt that conversion was
a welcome relief from dragging around undiagnosed guilt (i.e., "dead in my trespasses
and sins" Eph. 2:1).
The third
impression I had was just an
adventurous curiosity ...life as God lovingly intended it to be was within my
grasp. I wanted to know more about
what had been happening to me and I knew that this search was going to go
beyond the normal confines of naturalism and that I could trust that this
search for meaning and my place in all of this had a ring of authenticity. I had just enough faith that life's
meaning was grounded in the real thing, i.e., the creator and sustainer of life
itself. This of course was well
before discovering in Hebrews and elsewhere that Jesus Himself co-existed with the
Father as co-creator of the entire natural splendor I was soaking-up! The sense of wonder that I yearned for beyond worshiping the creature was
being fulfilled by the creator Himself.
It's a
little overwhelming to realize that God was so tuned into me that he could wrap
the gift of His Son with just the artistic flair that would speak to my
previously dormant visual sensitivities.
As an academic I was fearful that if I ever started conventional
artistic pursuits like the oil painting I enjoyed as a youngster I would get so
consumed with it that there would not be enough time to squeeze in what little
research I could muster with such a full teaching load plus the master's thesis
advising I was doing then for the Cybernetic Systems program. God had blessed me with at least the
opportunity to do my own landscape architecture around the home. He just caught me by surprise with the
scope and majesty of His desert landscape/skyscape.
It is
also interesting how he reached me professionally with my academic interest in
the behavioral sciences. It seems
like He knew I was headstrong enough to want to pursue psychology and its
derivatives in organizational behavior unfettered by what I misconstrued as
unproductive restrictions on my academic freedom. As an academic I was unknowingly being set-up by the world,
the flesh, and the devil to accept yet another counterfeit. This time it was the illusion that my
academic freedom was justly married with a commensurate amount of
responsibility as measured by little more than my workload. Instead, academic freedom needed to be
accountable for "true truth" in the
sense that Art Lindsley (2004) and others have articulated so well over the
years. Fear before a righteous and all-knowing God that I was off-base
and may lead students astray
as well was another way He changed
my desensitized heart.
Our Lord
knew also that I would learn the hard
way that the idealistic promises of the
60's that life would get better because of less restrictions of most any kind
would backfire, and that the autonomous, "self-actualized" economically
improved life would produce about a 40-year decline in real happiness (see Easterbrook's
"The Prosperity Paradox", 2003).
Consequently, even though today I am a big fan of worldview analysis, I
cannot claim that my conversion was fundamentally a well-thought-out worldview
conversion because I was largely unaware of how the decline of the secular
university (Sommerville, 2006) had hollowed-out and truncated socially
acceptable worldviews into a parody of academic freedom. Dominated by the secular humanism of
avowed atheists like Abraham Maslow and the reductionistic experiments of a Harry
Harlow (whom Maslow had worked with earlier @ the Univ. of Wisconsin's primate
lab), my understanding of what it means to be human did not freight enough
meaning for me professionally or personally. As a result I wandered away from much of the distracting
academic input until I could see that Jesus was the leading figure in my field
(to roughly paraphrase Dallas Willard) as well as a very present hope
personally. Jesus knew that to be
truly human I needed others at a deeper level than I had allowed up to that
point, and he brought me someone as a wife who needed me as much or more than I
needed her as a companion spiritually and every other way. Moreover, the Christian colleagues that
were popping-up around me as I got further into worldview research were complementing
the ultimate sense of belonging that I
had with Christ Himself.
Finally,
it seems that the nature of my conversion holds the clues as to the nature of
God's calling on my life. I have struggled off and on with what
God has uniquely called me to do, with an increase in uncertainty as I approach
retirement. Given the artistic
aspects and the relationship between psychology and biblical truth that
accompanied my conversion, it is becoming clearer as to God's specific calling. While I don't want to sidestep God's
desire to have me ask for specific guidance every day, there does seem to be a
pattern that others have recognized as well as me. So far, it seems to involve roles that involve a fairly high
degree of interpersonal interest and a desire to facilitate constructive
dialogue and teamwork. It seems
that any artistic involvement in especially gardening helps restore my
batteries for the interpersonal facilitation and the occasional writing I have
done...although I might be receptive to changing from an academic career to that
of landscape architecture if I could find a feasible work-around for my
post-polio weakness in both legs.
Writing itself does seem to float my boat but since I have not been able
to find a way to make it pay and I seem to linger over word choice and construction
longer than many, as a calling it seems to require more of a service request...and
a patient one at that. More
generally, there seems to be a sense that the closer I am to His Word the
closer I get to understanding myself, as well as vice-versa.
Post-Conversion
Personal Changes. Getting back on the path that has His
heart was both a relief and an adventurous adjustment. It would take God 15 years to prepare
me for the right next marriage partner.
What I sensed right away with Cynthia was the thrill of living with a
true sense of shared purpose. It
was almost too easy relating to someone I enjoyed so much. Given her other
calling as a elementary school teacher one of the greatest areas of "shared
dominion" has been in the area of integrating our Christian biblical worldview
with various aspects of the curriculum we serve in both secular and Christian
settings.
I am just
very thankful for a prodigal father God patient enough to let me wander around
like some spoiled son searching for what would meet my deepest longings for
meaningfulness. I am also
eternally grateful that He gracefully intervened with His shepherd's crook as I
continued to allow the world's mesmerizing menu of pursuits to so distract me
from any full consideration of God's claim on my life ("You're Not Your Own,
You Were Bought With a Price") that I had become numbed to the need for any
ongoing redemptive intervention by our Lord.
Post-Conversion
Academic Changes. One of the most notable academic
changes was a shift toward teaching and publishing in a new field of business
and professional ethics. While I
was able to fuse my organizational behavior background into a field largely
dominated by philosophy, nevertheless I still needed to acquire some
understanding and skill in the application of human rights, justice, and
utilitarian to a myriad of ethical dilemmas. Eventually, I grew weary of how these approaches were
designed to just minimize the collateral damage occasioned by the wrongful
actions of a few. It was then that
I turned back to my organizational behavior background to find ways to build a
climate that would reward more ethical behavior. The surprise was that some of these approaches opened the
possibility of even larger breakthroughs by way of a biblical Christian
worldview. However it took Christ
almost 15 years to prepare me for this with His own incredible curriculum.
Inductive
Bible study, principally in small groups, guided sometimes by Precept Bible
Studies (Kay Arthur), other times by Bible Study Fellowship, and initially by a
God-given mixture of married folk from Peninsula Bible Church, two of whom had
an academic background, was God's gift that I treasured most. Later, two older, former elders of the
same church helped further disciple me in fledging attempts of my own to
co-lead a single's Bible study.
Christ Himself also discipled me through the imaginative and caring
pastorship and their men's morning bible study "Road Crew" as well as through a
host of radio pastors familiar to all of us.
The
most exciting adventure had just begun with my attempts to integrate business
ethics, organizational behavior, and a biblical Christian worldview. I didn't realize until my first
conference with Dallas Willard and other Christian academics at the Christian
Leadership Ministries conference in Chicago 4 years ago that I had been
indirectly doing this in my classroom lectures, by, e.g., mapping societal and
organizational changes on the same basic template found in Judges, Kings,
Chronicles, & Nehemiah and later by those investigating the rise and fall
of civilizations such as Edward Gibbon, the Durants, C. John
Sommerville, Victor Davis Hanson, et.al., but without explicit reference to the
God of the Bible in this thoroughly secular university. Another point of integration were the
fairly recent findings in cognitive psychology (Bazerman, 2001) concerning such
motivational biases as the illusion of moral "superiority" (the findings that
most of us judge ourselves as more ethical than the average person...not a holier
than thou, but just ethically OK enough to prompt moral drowsiness) and other
unrealistically positive views of the self. As applied to business ethics this has to be balanced
against the media bias regarding business leaders who are judged guilty of serious
ethical lapses almost because they are proponents of free market capitalism. Those who do have often overestimated
the efficacy of legislating morality to prevent "perfect storm" episodes like
Enron & Arthur Anderson's ethical lapses and have missed the real
opportunities for improving the internal climate with better board
governance attention to rooting out the self-entitled executives who have a
perverted sense of individualism that Maslow wished he could have corrected
(Sayles & Smith, 2005) and championing a healthy supply of trustworthy
leaders, some of whom resemble what Jim Collins ("From Good to Great", 2001) calls
level 5 leaders who model personal humility and professional will.
I wonder
if those who champion instead the move toward a more socialistic version of
business have not implicitly bought into the old humanistic illusion (e.g.,
Rogers, Maslow and his early colleague, Herbert Marcuse) that most people are
basically good and that with a better environment moving in a more socialistic
direction we would see a better business world. Moreover, Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom,
Capitalism, and Western Success" (2005) demonstrates that elements within
Christianity actually gave rise to the development of capitalism as early as
the fifth century...with due allowance for earlier forms under the Roman
Republic. For our purposes of
understanding conversion amongst academics, it is noteworthy that Christianity stands
alone amongst other great belief systems in embracing logic, reason, and an
innovative, future orientation as the path toward enlightenment, freedom, and
progress. For academics, then, the
more likely contender for their belief system is not a religion other than
Christianity but secular naturalism (which seems to require a great deal more
faith than the evidence from Christianity requires) with the addition for some
of political involvement as a means of filling the God-shaped vacuum inside
them.
Personally,
I was being buoyed up over the typical disappointments of life by what I would
understand later as a quixotic blend of gratitude, trust, and an abandonment of
myself to serve Him. The source
for this personal growth spiritually came initially in 1977 from Pastor Ray
Stedman's adventuring through the bible (see his "Authentic Christianity,"
published posthumously in 1996) here in Palo Alto as well as Oswald Chambers (1963),
Scott Peck (1978), Paul Vitz (1977) and later from Henri Nouwen (1992) while I
was pouring over various attempts to reconcile psychology with
Christianity. Both personally and
academically I found my growth in Christ accelerated as I took on the task of
integrating my biblical Christian worldview with various constructs and issues
in my academic disciplines of originally organizational behavior and then later
professional preparation in business ethics coast-to-coast from, e.g., the
Institute for Global Ethics in Camden, Maine to Michael Josephson's Institute
of Ethics in Marina Del Rey, California. It certainly intensified my
appreciation for His guidance in my effort entitled "Managing Organizational
Behavior "Under the Sun": Dealing
with Our Errors of Omission in Personality & Motivational Constructs and in
Their Application even by Solomon Himself", National Faculty Leadership
Conference, Washington, D.C., June 24-27, 2004. Here the limits to an "internal" locus of control were
compared with Solomon's omission of an abiding "eternal" locus of control. Earlier I was challenged by the
monstrous evils at Enron and the more common ethical lapses of compromising on
quality coupled with cover-ups of those compromises to discover identity-driven
motivations to behave more ethically (Probasco, 2002). The author's collaborative research on
social identity maintenance-driven groupthink (1992) amplified by Kierkegaard's
(Moore, 2002) prophetic examination of the futility of post-modernists'
attempts at self-validation both presented stern challenges to an authentic
sense of identity in that research.
"Despite the absurd counterfeiting of the Silicon Valley culture of
craftsmanship, creation, and meritocracy by self-entitled tourist
entrepreneurs, we are seeing some signs of greater disclosure and hopefully a
return to company identities that shelve impersonal acronyms and names of
processes and products for the birth names of those entrepreneurs who will
think twice about a quick exit strategy that hollows out 401K retirement
accounts."
Insights
from C. S. Lewis. As I became more involved in worldview research, I also became
intrigued by pre-evangelical work being done in philosophy, literature, business
management, and psychology by others such as Tom V. Morris (e.g., "If Aristotle
Ran General Motors", 1997, & more recently, 2006, "If Harry Potter Ran General
Electric") as well as his prior work with his son on philosophy and superheroes
such as Spiderman. I sensed that
C. S. Lewis' vision of being air-lifted behind enemy lines for at least
lifestyle evangelical purposes was important now more than ever given the growing
apostasy of mainline Christianity since the 60's. As in Amos' prophetic times the challenge has extended
beyond the pagan world to those who profess to be Christians as well. What energized me the most was reading
George MacDonald's stories, initially those abridged by Michael Phillips and
more recently the originals such as "The Marquis of Lossie" (2004) written in
1877. Unlike C.S. Lewis my
imagination was sanctified not by MacDonald's fantasy works, but by MacDonald's
highly personable novels of the wholesome adventures of ordinary people
encountering the rigors of making an honest living, discovering more truth by
obeying well, etc., while gradually appropriating the reality of the New
Covenant in their relationships with each other and with the Lord. Again, the role of the moral
imagination became as important as the role played by the more rational and
analytical approaches of such apologists as Norm Geisler, Peter Bocchino, Randy
Newman, Chuck Colson, Alistair Begg, Ravi Zacharias, and Glenn Miller
(christian-thinktank.com) to name just a few (most of whom usually mix-in
illustrative stories that engage our imagination and emotions as well). I resonate to both and I sense that one
without the other does not quite reach even egghead academics who also have a
heart longing to be stirred.
By
surfacing the inspiring stories of George MacDonald as well as those of C. S.
Lewis I am aware that some still think that both are "universalists" and as
such sometimes omit clear conversion points in their stories. It reminds me now of the analogy of
driving into a town where you missed the city limits sign and only realize
you're in the town when you see the name on some place like the city library
building. Hearing this analogy
before my time of finally yielding in a
sublime desert sunrise paradoxically made me freer to let God do something more
pointed. From what research I have
done so far I think that those who claim that C. S. Lewis and his avowed
"mentor" George MacDonald were guilty of the heresy of universalism are in
error. Whether MacDonald was
trying to counteract the excesses of Calvinism in his day or was respectful of
the private, reverential nature of our relationship with God, I think we have
to leave it to God to do the converting while we help by just sowing
seeds. I also think that C. S.
Lewis' brother was off-base in judging that C. S. had given his life to Christ
as a youth and merely suffered a long bout of "mental illness" in the interval
between then and 1931 when he returned to his senses at Oxford. Personally, I can relate to his
brother's assertion because my godmother claims I was fully converted during my
Episcopalian confirmation. As it
turns out my brother's confirmation accompanied true conversion, in part because
a visiting bishop presided over the confirmation proceedings instead of our
local rector whom I may have not taken as seriously. Certainly earning a twelve year ribbon around my neck as an
acolyte (in a liturgical church that lacked the teaching emphasis of Peninsula
Bible) is not itself proof of authentic conversion and growing in Christ as a
result.
Reaching
unbelieving academicians today benefits from the twin roles of reason and the
imagination as previously described.
In addition, I would like to recommend gardening or an analogous means
of returning to the land God created for us to take care of. I'm sure Lewis and his brother's
weekend time in their garden accompanied the realization that an earthly garden
is never just earthly, since God Himself is in the garden just like that little
sign says "We're never closer to God than when we are in His garden". For this to be true in the ultimate
sense God would have to approve of honoring Him by gardening the place of our
lost innocence. Gardening then
becomes symbolic of our labor to reclaim our first home. As Vigen Guroian observes (March 21,
2006, Breakpoint), "...we garden because we are created in the image of the
Master Gardener in whose likeness we grow in measure as we garden."
As
academics we sometimes get too removed from the sensate world that God
created. "Through sight, sound,
taste, smell, and touch God meets us in the Garden—for He never left it,
not even after Adam's banishment.
He has invited us back in.
"I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43) in
the garden that you grow."
Finally, to trade on the metaphor of plant roots, it would be foolhardy
to blithely proceed (like Maslow and I did early-on) as if sin had no roots,
just as it would be hopeless to again buy the lie of the autonomous self...for
we're wholly dependent upon God to save ourselves. Then we can be eternally grateful for His subsequent
sanctification as we sink our roots ever deeper "in Christ." Thus stripped down to the bare root
essentials, we can actively rely on the power of the gospel as the
meta-narrative to do its work in even the post-modern era with all of its
claims of rendering obsolete the only Truth that sets one free.
Conclusion. Thanks again
be to God that "...even when we (myself and other self-important academics) were
dead in our transgressions, (God) made us alive together with Christ (by grace
we have been saved)" Eph. 2:5. My
gratitude for what Col. 3:12-17 explains as my "new self" and what Romans 1:17 summarizes as "...the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith" is a far more realistic and adventurous
way to live than what Maslow initially thought about "roaring off the face of
the earth" in his tragic suppression of the truth that all have sinned and need the righteousness that only God can provide (Romans
1:18). Only God Himself knows the
specificity of a secular Jew's heart like
Maslow's so He could have reached him after he recanted and hopefully was on
the verge of conversion himself as a Christian colleague surmised just before
his death. It just takes God Himself to show nice, gregarious guys like myself our
camouflaged sin condition and the underlying need and longing that only God
Himself can satisfy...along with the bewildering peace and joy that our Father
God through His Son can give us once we accept in fear and trembling His sacrificial death on our behalf. Then true self-transcendence and
an identity bestowing process ensues in the midst of authentic "body life"
community. As such, we come to
appreciate more fully the meta-narrative (Hindmarsh, 1999) detailing God's
redemptive process of uniquely encountering each of us as He facilitates a far
more robust identity rooted as it is in Christ rather than in the narrow, shifting sands of occupation and
any number of superficial social identities like class, ethnic roots, leisure
pursuits, geographical locale, and the like.
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