Money, Power, and Wonder

I recently read an article by Arianna Huffington, founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, a prominent online news website. It brought out her views about the seemingly most important metrics of being successful in today's world—money and power! Well, she has proposed a Third Metric, based around "well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back". In her speech at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., Ms. Huffington told graduates not to settle just for breaking through glass ceilings, but to change the system by "going to the root of what's wrong."

"Don’t buy society’s definition of success," she said. "Because it’s not working for anyone. It’s not working for women, it's not working for men, it's not working for polar bears, it's not working for the cicadas that are apparently about to emerge and swarm us. It's only truly working for those who make pharmaceuticals for stress, diabetes, heart disease, sleeplessness and high blood pressure."

She has also tried to connect this Third Metric concept with Biblical writing and principles. You can read about this at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/biblical-third-metric_n_4826824.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

My first thoughts were that it is tricky to try to take small parts of anything, especially the Bible, and make one's point about any subject, without any sense of the context, history, or culture around the cited passages. There are some good passages mentioned here that tie in with her Third Metric philosophy. However, I thought more about the overall message that Ms. Huffington was bringing forth, and it has a clear parallel with what Outside Church Walls is trying to honor.

The Three Metrics for a meaningful life proposed by Ms. Huffington are money, power, and “focusing on our own well-being, cultivating a sense of wonder, passing on our wisdom, and practicing compassion”. Note that it is hard to define the third one as one word, like the first two. But also, the first two are not thrown out or just replaced by only the last one.

Our OCW efforts are looking at how to be “church” in these times, and connecting to those outside the church walls to find and extend the faith we all have. This means not necessarily throwing out everything we have traditionally thought of being church, but to look at new ways that change our perspective and actions. This COULD mean “throwing out the old, and bringing in the new”, but probably more realistically WILL mean changing the overall purpose of the physical church, its people, and its traditions to connect it well with our communities and those who we (in the church!) interact with in our lives. OCW is still working on what this can look like, and likely will be long after we end as an organized group, but for everyone now in the church, this is the essence of acting out our faith is—working with what we have and connecting with what the world is and making it a more faithful and compassionate place for all.

Jim