About Us
Add an eVent
Contact Us
eVent Night Out
Featured spacer
Personal growth needs to be nurtured
Jazz and blues fest offers great lineup
Why Christian tend to like Judas
Travel spacer
Technology spacer
Odd News spacer
Music spacer
Fashion spacer
Chapters spacer
Valley Classifieds spacer

Are you missing an inner compass?
By Tim Schroeder
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Email this article
Printer friendly page
Are you missing an inner compass?
Tim Schroeder
I design these columns to possess a rather light-hearted, inspirational mood. Life is heavy enough and one reason I write is to attempt to lighten burdens rather than add to them. That said, every once in a while an issue emerges that is too important to ignore and too serious to treat lightly. As you might guess, this is one of those occasions.
Ten years ago, American journalist and Harvard professor David Gergen wrote an incredibly insightful book titled, Eyewitness To Power. I completed it last night. Gergen served as a senior staff advisor to four U.S. presidents: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, and his book is an eminently fair assessment of what made each of them tick. What factors contribute to the successes and failures of the most powerful men in the world?
Of particular interest to everyone, of course, is his assessment of Bill Clinton, a man many consider to be the most intelligent president in recent history. Why did someone with so much potential wind up almost being impeached? Gergen doesn‘t claim to have all the answers, but he is adamant that it has to do with a lot more than sex and lies. I found his analysis so piercing I couldn‘t ignore it. “Clinton‘s central problem has been the lack of an inner compass. He has a 360-degree vision, but no true north. He isn‘t yet fully grounded within. Explaining the success of an earlier president, historian David McCullough once wrote of Harry Truman that ‘He knew who he was and liked who he was. He liked being Harry Truman. He enjoyed being Harry Truman.‘ Bill Clinton isn‘t exactly sure who he is yet and tries to define himself by how well others like him.”
Wow! His central problem has been the lack of an inner compass. Could that be said about me? How about you? Where does an inner compass come from? What force compels you toward True North?
One of the most consistent criticisms of the Holy Bible and the God it describes is that they are both out of date. A thousand times I‘ve heard it said, “Times have changed. Surely you don‘t believe ‘that‘ any more, do you?” Gergen‘s analysis has encouraged me to not cringe when such accusations are made. What use would the Bible be if it did change with the times? How could anyone orient their life around its truth as an inner compass if every time a new generation decided times should change, the Bible and the God it describes changed to accommodate them. Who wants a compass that doesn‘t always point True North?
In today‘s rapidly changing value system, absent a foolproof inner compass, one seems doomed, like Clinton, to an existence of continual approval-seeking, mercilessly tossed to and fro by every changing wind. Maybe some unchanging, eternal, timeless truths aren‘t such a bad thing after all. In fact, I‘ve made up my mind that the next time someone suggests to me that the Bible I believe in hasn‘t changed in 2,000 years, I‘ll take it as the highest of compliments.
- Tim Schroeder is a pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Kelowna and chaplain to the Kelowna Rockets and Kelowna fire department. His column appears each Sunday in eVent.
Top of Page
COUNT: 135346280