407: Eric Metaxas: William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace

11/12/20 • 35 min

A few months ago I hadn't heard the names William Wilberforce or Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now they rank among my greatest influences. Eric Metaxas's biographies of these two men were among the main reasons. Once I read them, I had to meet Eric and bring his view here.

Read the books, learn about the men, what they did, and the environments in which they did it.

Few who spend time with me would expect me to find inspiration from a man whom I heard describe himself as a "Jesus freak" or strongly promote President Trump, whose policies I haven't seen increasing Earth's ability to sustain life and society, but those who know me well know my intense curiosity for people with unfamiliar views. Those who know me very well will find deep values of mine that resonate with Eric's beyond taking inspiration from Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer.

I recorded a longer introduction than usual to recount my discovering Eric's work so you can hear more background there. Recording shortly before the election limited our recording time, meaning we covered only a fraction of what we could have. I hope this episode was the first of many.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Read the books, learn about the men, what they did, and the environments in which they did it.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

406: J. B. MacKinnon, part 1: The Once and Future World

J. B. MacKinnon's book The Once and Future World influenced my view of nature as much as anyone's. I thought I knew what nature was, what we were trying to conserve or preserve, but I wasn't even close. I found his writing gripping and colorful. I'll link to a couple recordings I made that quoted the book at length.

We've been talking about our work, his new book he's nearly finished, my book I've just started, and how he was thinking of acting on his

research personally.

He was sharing so personally about the challenge he was considering for himself, impromptu, I asked if he would consider recording a podcast episode. We just jumped into it. Here's both of us unrehearsed, unprepared.

I loved getting to learn the backgrounds of wildlife, Hawaii, all the things I read from Once and Future World, and how and why he found

out about them. I hope you're all also on your path to discover variety in food, clothing, community, and so on that our culture obscures and makes us feel backward about.

Partly I'm impressed with myself at remembering those parts of his book unaided, but really that recall illustrates the power of the book and sadly what we've done to our world. But hopefully what we can restore. I'm always impressed with how fast nature rewilds when we take our foot off the gas. And how much we enjoy the surprising discovery of simple, sustainable living.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

408: Nancy Reagan and the Environment

Here are my notes I read from for this episode:

Just say no

drugs winning

Try telling smoker that cigarettes cause lung cancer and see if it stops.

Doesn't. It takes work but rewarding

Try giving more and more facts. They heard already.

Now imagine Nancy Reagan was a smoker or cocaine user while saying just say no

Imagine she smoked or did drugs while saying not to.

That's Al Gore, DiCaprio, everyone!

The problem isn't hypocrisy. I can't stand people making environment into moral issue. I'm not good for not polluting. You live by your values as much as I live by mine. If you don't value stewardship I'm not good by your values. If you value it as much as I do, then fix your problem.

The point is effectiveness. It doesn't work to lead Alcoholics Anonymous sessions with a fifth of gin half finished in your hand or weight watchers full of doof.

DiCaprio, flying your whole film crew around the world when you lack snow because of global warming, can you see how you're leading AA while drunk? With your notoriety, you should have a legacy to last millennia. Instead, you undermine it. Al Gore and all the rest, same thing.

Muhammad Ali as a conscientious objector. Now there's a man who acted with integrity, transcended sport, and become one of the greatest not athletes but humans of all time. We can learn from him. He knew standing tall meant getting on your knees, not flying first class and hiding it.

I know, most don't want to change the world. You just want your 401k to clear. I didn't ask for back-to-back 500-year hurricanes. You didn't ask the science to predict 2 billion climate refugees this century and more. But those are our times.

I didn't ask that we can do something about it, or decline, but we can.

More smokers telling us not to smoke won't help, nor more alcoholics telling us to stop drinking, or polluters telling us to stop polluting.

If you want to stand tall, you have to get on your knees. If you want to reach the mountain top, you have to climb, which means getting your knees dirty, meaning dropping the addiction to polluting.

Because only from the mountain top can you see the promised land, a world I've seen where stewardship of nature and other people trumps self-serving excuses that you have no choice or baseless accusations that someone who acts has more time, money, resources, or privilege than you. Look deep and you'll see you have all the means you need, as does any addict to overcome their habits.

I'm calling on you to lead yourself, not manage like Nancy Reagan. To lead, to find it within yourself, to dig deep, to see that how you lead others will be your greatest legacy.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.