Where / When / How
it Happened
And we know that in all things
God works for the good of those who love him,
who have been called according to his purpose.
–Apostle Paul
Letter to the Romans 8:28 (NIV)
Here, I offer a perspective I have enjoyed since I was around 37 years old. But know this… my nature, how God made me, is not conducive to sharing it. My faith, that is. As such, I have maintained my faith quite personally. But, like I decided to do throughout my first book project[ † ], to step out of my familiarity zone, I do so here. If it helps even one other, then it is worth the hours of writing it up. Yes, life is short; but, eternity is really long for each and every one of us.
In connection to the subject of leadership, which was the last subject of Chapter 10 in Math to Mettle, He who is the foundation of this chapter is also the greatest leader of all time. He was a man who deserved to be served by all yet served all, even (or more so) the lowest of the low that are cast out by many others in this world. He was an awesome leader… an awesome human. He was God, entered into our world taking on our human form but exhibiting one overarching characteristic we didn’t and don’t — perfection. That man is Jesus Christ, the epitome of leadership… servant leadership.
Whoever wants to be a leader among you
must be your servant
–Jesus Christ (to the Apostles)
Gospel of Mark 10:43 (NLT)
1 In the Beginning
In a conversation with my ex-wife in 2015, a time when she was going through some particularly tough stuff, something came into my head and out my mouth. I won’t share what she said (nothing bad at all) that led to this statement materializing since it is not my place to share her part of our conversation, but it provoked the following from me. Through losing the most important thing in my life I gained the most important thing in life. That is, 12 years prior, in the process of losing my family through separation, divorce, and them moving to Chicago, a fourteen-hour roundtrip by car, I discovered a personal relationship with God unlike I had ever fathomed despite twelve years of Roman Catholic schooling and all that. My Catholic upbringing never changed my life; I went through all the motions, but at heart I had never lived intentionally in that regard. But, through that horrible period and outcome of losing my marriage and family, the toughest of my tough stuff, I came out of it with a gift I could never have foreseen. It was (is) a gift by even the strictest of definition — nothing I deserved, nothing I could earn, just had to open it, so to speak.
I now had a fighting chance to be all God created me to be. Better yet, it was also to the benefit of those around me, including my children who were cheated of the mom-and-dad-together upbringing they should have had. As a result of this life change, I know with complete certainty I am and have been a better dad to my kids even though we saw each other only for the weekend every 3 or 4 weeks and a little extra most summers. I believe I am a better man and continuing with forward progress in that regard. Maybe, someday, I will have a chance to be a better husband.
Through that shit-storm of 2002-2004, I came to understand much better what it meant to be Christian, and accepted Christ as Lord and Savior with making a choice to follow him. My life changed in an amazing way that I really cannot describe. But, I can share some experiences and perspective that, as noted, I hope might be helpful at least in the discouraging times — as you might guess, that was a very discouraging time, and I have had plenty since, though none as bad, nor none that could be as difficult to get through, as now I am not in it alone. As I have attested to at the very start in Chapter 1 of A Game Against Reality, it is far more desirable to learn from others’ mistakes, call them hardships here, than to have to learn from our own doing. So, how can I get to this point in my writing endeavors and not share some of these other hardships so that they might help others? They have surely helped me.
But first, just as I stated in the Introduction to A Game against Reality and Math to Mettle, I must be clear, I don’t have this all figured out.
The further I push ahead into the new,
the more I see that I don’t know.
2 Who’s in Control of What and Who
When times are tough, whether one believes in God or not, follows Jesus or not, God is in control of situation and circumstance. I know this not only by belief, but also by being convinced from my experiences. Though, I also understand that God does not generally take control of us; we have to give him control, or should I say continually try to relinquish control to him. Left to ourselves, we are in control of ourselves — our thinking and our actions — through our mind, will, and emotions. To the extent we turn those over to God in surrender, the more control God has over us in addition to the situations and circumstances surrounding us. The better we do this, the better off we are. Not the easier off we are; the better off we are. When I get there — to surrendering control of me to God completely — I won’t let you know. You read that right. I have made an effort in all my writings to not bullshit my audience by sugar coating the stark and tough realities. So here, I won’t tell you “I will let you know” when I get there completely since I know that will never happen; I will never consistently or completely surrender control to God.
But I should! God has a plan, we are each part of it, and it includes a plan and purpose specifically and perfectly conceived for each of us. The better we understand what it is and align with it, again, the better off we are. But I know I am simply not capable of understanding it all and it is not my place to do so. God has his big part; I have my little part. I struggle to see and understand my part; but I try. I am also constantly cautious in thinking I see my part well. I have my foundation of selfishness and flaws as much as the next guy; it is hard to trust myself to not spin my part to what I want and call it God’s leading. But I try for the better, and I think that is what God wants — that we want to surrender and follow, and try to surrender and follow. And in hindsight, God at work in the tough times becomes clearer, helping us through them and making us better as a result of getting through them. I am finding this over and over as the years progress. I won’t bore you with dozens of examples; okay, honestly, I have not recorded them to even remember that many. But there are a few little stories I think may be worth telling. First things first though; two things in fact.
3 First… We All Have Faith
I have to cover a few things before getting back to the surviving and thriving part and those examples I just promised. First, a couple definitions; each is chosen, from multiple definitions the dictionaries provide for each, for its best fit to the context here:
- faith (n): firm belief in something for which there is no proof.
- belief (n): conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.
- evidence (n): an outward sign.
Putting aside the inevitable rare exceptions I suppose exist, everyone has faith in something. The difference is what our faith is in. Faith is belief in something that cannot be proven.[ ‡ ] There can be evidence supporting the belief; though evidence in general is not certain proof, it can be a sign, an indicator. The first question is whether one will consider the evidence to be evidence at all; will one acknowledge it as an indicator to be examined and evaluated. Once acknowledged as evidence, including evidence supporting two or more contradictory beliefs, we each assess for ourselves the plausibility of the evidence. Since it is not certain proof, we assess it in terms of likelihood.
We all choose a body of evidence to adopt, leading to a belief. When the evidence is not provable as noted in the case at hand, that belief is faith; we have faith. Atheism is a belief there is no God based on a respective body of evidence, none of which can be proven. Christianity is a belief in God, God being a Heavenly Father, Son Jesus Christ, and Spirit living in a three-persons-yet-one Trinity that is admittedly a mystery in and of itself but evidenced by a book, called the Bible. That book has stood the test of thousands of years, including a global readership that has survived in spite of significant persecution for doing so, persecution that continues in many parts of the world today. The Bible, as evidence, cannot be proven either. So, Christianity is indeed faith. And so is every religion in between, among, and around Christianity and Atheism. I would reiterate, though, that the Bible has survived for a long time in spite of many efforts to “shut it down.”
My faith is in Christ as my Lord and Savior. I consider the Bible, and the physical creation around me — plants, animals, this planet, our solar system, galaxies, the universe — with all the fascinating yet incomplete understanding humanity has of it all — up to the largest in size and down to the smallest in size and detail — as plausible evidence that there must be a creator, specifically God. And furthermore, my belief is that my God is the God, as proclaimed by Christ in that book, which encompasses the Old Testament and the New Testament including the Gospel (good news), all written by humans divinely inspired by God. That is, I am Christian, reborn as those in the Evangelical denominations would further describe it. What that means is, in layman’s terms, a rebirth in Christ that brings a new heart, or a conversion of heart… true change.
Now, I began the previous paragraph with “My faith is in…” which, by introducing the additional words of the definition of faith at the start of this subsection, can be stated as follows: “My firm belief in something for which there is no proof is in…” What this means is the entirety of this chapter is not a matter of proof or even convincing, rather it is more sharing about me, just as I did in many of the approximately 20 chapters of the AGAR–M2M book project that spawned this. Shared here are life experiences not provable facts — experiential learning/knowledge, not factual knowledge. Those life experiences I have chosen to share are mainly in the context of engineering, engineering design, and business, which are the contextual elements of the AGAR–M2M book project. Near the end here I share more about me; that is, some further technical details of what I see, as an engineering researcher/educator as much so as “just a guy,” as plausible evidence upon which my faith is supported, in part.
4 Second… If this was a Tough Time and I am Responsible
Now, if you are/were a student of mine reading this, and we are late in or beyond our time together, I realize you may have at least some negative opinions of me and the revelation above may seem absurd in your mind. “How can Endres possibly claim to be Christian having just put us through all this hell of the capstone design course?” Whether it was something I said that was (unintentionally) hurtful, or an attitude I (inadvertently) put forth, or a level of organization less than you would expect, or myriad other grievances I see in student evaluations, I get it. In fact, I doubly get it.
4.1 “I Get It” #1 (as written to my students)
A common misconception that often leads to cynicism about Christianity and Christians, one I also had to a degree in my younger years, is this. Anytime someone claiming to be Christian does something that is hurtful, wrong, illegal, etc., non-Christians judge that to be hypocrisy and that feeds cynicism, and understandably so on the latter. However, suggesting that someone who chooses to follow Christ will be sinless is like suggesting that someone who chooses to see a doctor when sick will for all time thereafter be perfectly healthy. Hospitals are full of sick people, many on repeated visits; church buildings are full of sinners returning week after week.
Accepting Christ as Lord and Savior does not make you sinless; it means you desire to sin less. This does not remove from you your ability to sin; it focuses you on the one who was sinless — Jesus — and following his ways. And just as someone leaves a doctor’s office or hospital with high hopes of improved health, the sinner leaves church on Sunday, and hopefully a small group some other time in the week, and daily time in prayer, and regular reading of the Bible, with a hope and desire to be less sinful — to be more like Jesus. That person leaving the doctor’s office will never be in perfect health, nor will that Christian ever be sinless. But, by God’s grace offered to all and given to those who through faith believe on Christ — who choose to follow Christ, albeit in a never-perfect, often highly flawed way — Christ is Savior.
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What about the Lord part? I question whether it is coincidence that “Lord and Savior” is very rarely heard stated “Savior and Lord.” Yes, Christ is our savior, but if you choose to follow him, he is your Lord, your Master, the one who has authority over you. What I see at the root of humanness is selfishness and pridefulness.[ § ] In selfishness, we want our way; and in pridefulness, our way is the best way. Bringing them together, being in our human nature where they reside hand in hand, makes us lord of our life, and by consequence we can sometimes tend to lord over others, not just wanting our way but deserving our way and even demanding our way. But, Jesus is Lord. Knowing Jesus, accepting him as Lord, does not erase my selfishness and pridefulness. They are inherent in my sinful human nature. But knowing Jesus, following him and his commands as Lord, tempers my inherent selfishness and pridefulness. As I grow closer to Jesus my selfishness and pridefulness fall deeper into the shadows of his love and leading, becoming tempered but not eliminated. And knowing him means making Jesus the one on whom I center my life, not “putting him at the center of my life.” The latter is not following him as Lord, it rather would be trying to lead him as his lord, selfishness and pridefulness abounding. Yet, I still do the latter along with my attempt, and deep desire, to do the former and follow him, my life centered on him, the perfect target of life abundant and eternal.
To sum it up, the reality is… I fall flat on my face at times, stumble plenty often, do not take the way out from temptations as I should at times, and will never escape that core of human shortfall — selfishness and pridefulness. But, all that is against what I desire now, a desire that is intentional and guided by the best example to be documented, Jesus Christ. With every ten steps forward that I take, there seems to be nine steps back; it is a slow walk, but in the right direction with Someone in the lead who loves me and knows all that is best. Add to that God’s gift of grace, by definition getting something we don’t deserve, — salvation for eternal life. And add to that the corollary of receiving mercy, which is not getting what we do deserve — eternal death. How can I not have peace in and through the storms and the screwups and… always.
4.2 “I Get It” #2 (as written to my students)
Now, the second way in which I get it, that is if you are shocked and even cynical to be reading this, is this. Children have parents for a variety of reasons. One of them is to provide for the child’s needs, their legitimate needs, but not to serve all the child’s wants. It is easy to give what people want, but to instead give them what they need, based on your best knowledge from your greater experience, can be hard. Parents have it the hardest because parental love brings a deep desire to satisfy wants over meeting certain needs that are contradictory to those wants. What people really need they often don’t see for themselves and, furthermore, often contradicts what they want. Not seeing the need is neither a failure nor a mistake; it is a matter of lacking experience. With experience can come growth in humility and, with that, growth in objectivity, which is needed to more often see the greater good of the need over the want. It’s not just parents. It includes teachers, coaches, and mentors as well, whether of athletes or musicians or entrepreneurs or capstone design students. My point is this. To the best of my ability, based on the knowledge I have acquired through my own life and professional experience to this point, and with vast contributions I have learned from others’ experiences, I try semester after semester to give my students an experience they need in order to grow and prepare for their career, regardless of whether or not it aligns with their wants, or their needs as they see them based on their lesser experience.
And like great parents who also seek to go beyond basic needs, to provide for higher needs that are beyond those of basic sustenance, ones that are solely for their child’s benefit and not just survival, I have included more than just the bare minimum of what you need right now to just get by. I don’t expect that my students agree that all I have provided in their capstone experience and time together has potential benefit. For my students, I, and my program team under my leadership and direction, aim to serve their basic capstone design needs as well as what I see as needs of future benefit. In fact, the majority of my first book (A Game Against Reality) is not “technical,” for the simple reason that the non-technical majority of that book is so lacking in engineering curricula while I know it to be equally or more important for an engineer’s future success than are the technical matters. It is my hope that all my students will, in time, when hindsight kicks in whether a month, a year, or a decade in the future, look back on their capstone learning experience and see it in a favorable, beneficial light. I am sure I am guilty of letting my passion get the better of me at times. That passion runs deep to the heart, a passion to share those non-technical things I wish I had seen back when I was in my students’ shoes and seats. Those things are the realities, not the theory, and facing and learning about realities can be very challenging, even painful. But due to their importance, I am willing to take the fall for being the bad guy in hope that my students might absorb some of it and be better for it. My apology would only be for my passion tainting the quality with which I might have otherwise presented the content, not for the content itself.
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Now, getting back to knowing what is important… to be sure, in regard to knowing what is important for me, versus you knowing what is important for you, I am no better than you. I am no pro at knowing what I need more so than those things I want. But compared to you (my students), I am further down the road. Granted, I am further down my road, not your road. That said, all roads bear similarity when viewed from the standpoint of principles, those truths that apply broadly across all variants of situations, across all roads. I repeat; I am not better than you in this. I am still discovering needs specific to me that I didn’t see before, ones that are for sure in contradiction to what I may want. But as I mature, and likewise as you mature, what evolves is a greater ability to fill our parent’s earlier role, in that, when we see a need we act on it even if it contradicts a want. You can achieve that too. It’s called maturity — the ability to make yourself do what you should, not what you want. We all are capable of continual maturation.
As a final note here, regarding parents, they are always your parents and to the extent they offer wise counsel, that continues to be their job. You just have the option as an adult to act on it or not. Your becoming an adult does not mean a parent’s job is done. And finally, if your parents are not alive or are not willing to continue growing themselves so they can provide sound wisdom, find others to complement them or make up for the loss. In fact, find others in any case, mentors in various aspects of life. Find mentors with experience, that compounded type of experience of many years versus one year of experience many times over. That is, seek out ones who are intentional about living and learning in life.
[ † ] This refers to the AGAR–M2M book project, which produced the (not-yet-published in fall 2020) companion books A Game Against Reality and Math to Mettle.
[ ‡ ] Underlines in this and the next paragraph tie back to the definitions above.
[ § ] I do not suggest that “taking pride” in your work is bad in healthy measure, in the sense of having a persevering attention to your work and with a desire to do it well so that the result reflects well on you and others associated with it. But, being prideful is another story. By definition, pridefulness is “a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.” or “an often-unjustified feeling of being pleased with oneself or with one’s situation or achievements.” (emphasis added)
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