The buzz from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers has been about the 10,000 hours of diligent work required to be a success in one’s chosen field. Diana Butler Bass, speaking at Rosedale, Toronto, in late February, mentioned the 10,000 hours while speaking of successful churches she had studied. Gladwell gives the example of the Beatles and Bill Gates, amongst many others, who through a combination of luck and grace were able to spend an extraordinary amount of time perfecting their craft.
But, Gladwell’s book—subtitled, The Story of Success—is about much more than just practice, practice, practice. Perhaps the most interesting story in this collection of fascinating characters, is that of Chris Langan, who has an IQ of 195, which is 45 points higher than Albert Einstein’s. But, Langan’s is essentially a story of failure—despite his natural gift (he got a perfect score on his SAT) the best he’s achieved in life is to be a celebrity foil on TV shows. He’s dropped out of schools, and has floundered most of his life. Langan attributes his failure to his dirt-poor, wrong-side-of-the-track upbringing.
Gladwell argues that success in life, in the world, is dependent on many factors—among them a comfortable socio-economic start, which gives the child a cultural advantage. If Langan had been born into a middle-class environment, his story might be very different. Despite his God-given strengths (he was talking at six-months of age) he grew up in an environment that did not cultivate success. So, whenever Langan bumped into mundane setbacks in life—a professor who doesn’t give a small extension on an essay—he gave up rather than fight.
Gladwell compares him to Robert Oppenheimer (the Father of the Nuclear Bomb and a precocious child, though only a gurgling infant), who was born into a wealthy family, and grew up with the expectation that the world was his oyster: “If you’re someone who was sent to the Ethical Cultural School, then you aren’t going to be intimidated by a row of Cambridge dons arrayed in judgment again you.” No indeed; instead, you charm, you debate, you pull all-nighters, anything “that allowed him to get what he wanted from the world.”
Langan’s failures echoed with me as I worked on the Record’s cover stories so far this year: May’s national survey; April’s leadership article; the shocking survey on clergy depression in March. It seems that the Church, and let’s speak specifically of our own national version, has lost confidence in itself.
I still hold to what I wrote in March, that our denomination is a major force in the world. We do amazing work, in amazing ways—but a lot of it is done within individual silos of single congregations. But despite that strength, we aren’t a self-confident body. How else to interpret a survey (page 18) that proves we don’t read the primary text—the Bible, in case you were wondering—that motivates and drives our faith? How else to interpret the fact that we don’t pray? That we—its a survey of Presbyterians by Presbyterians—don’t share our faith with each other, let alone with those outside the church?
I read it as a lack of confidence—if you don’t believe enough in what you claim to believe in, then you have lost confidence in yourself. You fail to act as if your Faith has true purpose or meaning. Somehow our Faith has become secondary to … to what? To doing things? To polity? To history? To ideology? To complacency? To a lack of cultural confidence …
The Church, our church, is very much like Langan—our gifts are great, graced to us by God through His son Jesus—and we do some things with them, but we make excuses for ourselves. Which is of course absurd: we have the 10,000 hours of training, we have the knowledge and the teaching that what we are is good and worthy, we have God in our corner, and Jesus in our midst—or do we? Yes, we do! But, we seem to have forgotten that.
Gladwell finishes this book with a powerful and personal chapter on his mother Joyce, who has enriched the Record with her wisdom and thoughtfulness over the years. Till then, for nearly 300 pages, we’ve been in the company of the egregiously rich and famous, but Gladwell, by writing of his mother, makes us understand that true success isn’t solely about numbers. It is first encouraged by Grace—which is available to all—and achieved by those with the strength of character to use it well. Amen, brother.
