Samson Was Lonely - And It Killed Him

Last Sunday I preached on Samson - as in the Old Testament character who was a mix of Superman's strength, G.I. Joe's military prowess, the Incredible Hulk's rage, and Fabio's hair.  The sermon was a bit long, and a few parts hit the cutting room floor and were not picked up again.  But I can't stop thinking about this one element:  Samson Was Lonely!

Leadership consultants (in both the church and business worlds) teach the same truth - Leadership is lonely!  As one progresses up the "ladder" there are fewer and fewer people to answer to and go to for advice until, at the top, it feels like there is no one.  And with greater responsibility comes fewer options.  Leadership is lonely!  You think I'm kidding - here is one of many articles.

When I look at the life of Samson, and especially his pitfalls, it seems obvious that he was a lonely guy.  Okay, I realize that the Bible never says it specifically, but it really is not difficult to see.  Most people took the Nazarite vow for a limited time - Samson lived the vow for a lifetime.  Which means that most of his friends saw him as some kind of religious extremist.  I can begin to relate to that.  Sometimes I purposely do not tell people that I am a pastor because I know that as soon as I do, they will get all weird around me, like they aren't good enough to be around me (which just feels like I don't "fit in.").  How do you think it felt for Samson?  He probably had no friends.

Samson couldn't even find a girlfriend among his own people.  I know the Bible tells us that God was working to get Samson "in" with the Philistines, but still - Samson didn't know that - he just wanted a wife and couldn't find one.  When he got married, he didn't even have friends to join him as his groomsmen, but was given 30 "friends."  Later, after that whole wedding fiasco, we find him visiting a prostitute.  What kind of men visit prostitutes?  Lonely ones.  Finally, he gives away the secret of his strength to the gold-digging Delilah.  I wonder if he saw it coming, or if he ignored the giant-red-flags-with-blinking-lights because he just wanted to feel loved by someone.

Yep- Samson was lonely.  And like so many lonely leaders, he compromise his integrity and lost all credibility and influence.

If you are a leader and you are feeling a bit lonely, welcome to the club.  But you can't stay lonely for long.  Or at least you must pro-actively work to address it.  In addition to the one above, here are a few articles that can help.

7 Ways to Help Prevent Leadership Loneliness Lonely and Dangerous
It's Time To Acknowledge CEO Loneliness

The suggestions are not genius, though.  We already know them.  We already want them.   We just think we are too busy.  We think we can't make the time.  But maybe we should ask those who have gone before us and never made the time...until they really lost everything and everyone with a few bad decisions.

I keep thinking that Samson could have been so much more of an influence.  He could have lead his people for forty years, not just twenty.  He could have lead them back to God, not just to temporary reprieve from Philistine invasion. 

Oh, what might have been, had loneliness not taken its toll.

My Fasting Experience - Longing to Eat What Fell From the Rich Man's Table

On the eighteenth day of my twenty-one day fast, I served as a WatchDOG at Olivia's school. This wonderful program invites dads to serve for a day at their child's school. We help car riders unload and get into school.  We push swings at recess.  We review flash cards with students who are struggling.  We open six to seven hundred milk cartons, yogurt containers and Lunchables lids.  It is a great program!  It also gives dads a new appreciation for teachers! I usually enjoy my days at the school serving as WatchDOG.  However, when I signed up in January for a Wednesday in April, I didn't know I would be fasting, living life at 50-75% speed.  The kindergarteners on the playground didn't expect that either.

Recess was a bit rough, but I made it.  Two hours of lunchroom help, however, did me in.  At the end of lunch, with a few hours left in the school day, I had to give in and go home.  I just couldn't do it.

But that is not the purpose of this post.  The cafeteria crisis was deeper.  I have written earlier that after even one day of fasting, the hunger pains go away.  If you have experimented with fasting, you really must try a multi-day fast sometime. It is not has tortuous as you have imagined - the hunger pains really do go away!  But by day 18, having lost more than twenty pounds, I was getting hungry.  And desire for food increased in the presence of it!  The hot lunch options for the day included a hot dog or roasted chicken.  You can imagine which option most of the kids selected.  It was so hard to open container after container.  I just wanted a bite.  Near the end of each class's lunchtime, the students walk to the end of the table and dump their styrofoam trays, sporks and uneaten leftovers. I found myself longing for a leftover.  Gross, I know, but hey, I was hungry and there was food!

No, this is not a post on how Americans waste too much food, or a critique of school lunch programs.  If you want that, write your own blog post on the topic.

Here is the takeaway from my lunchroom longings:  I wondered how many hungry children in developing nations or in overcrowded cities walk past electronics stores and stare at televisions in the windows showing first world citizens eating cheeseburgers, hot dogs, cake and specialty coffees. As   gaze at life in a distant world, do they long for just a bite of food, of any food, but get no nourishment, neither from their own family or government, or from the families they see feasting around the world?  Do they, like the beggar Lazarus who lived outside the gates of the unnamed rich man, long to eat even the scraps that fall from our tables?  That story in Luke 16 scares me.  You see, I am a one-percenter, globally speaking.  And most likely so are you.  So are all of the campers who "occupied" Wall Street a few summers ago. 

When I am not fasting, I am feasting, and most likely so are you.  If "overeating" is the consumption of more calories than are needed to maintain healthy BMI, then I am guilty.  How can I regularly feast/overeat in good conscience while others are starving?  The parable of the rich man and Lazarus scares me.  Just sayin...

A second image raced through my mind as I stood in the cafeteria watching fifty gallon trash liners fill with leftovers and utensils.  I wonder how much of our processed food is packaged in foreign companies by underage workers earning pennies an hour, working seven days a week from dawn till dusk, sharing what they earn with their families but remaining hungry?  I have no research, so the answer might be zero.  But it might be in the thousands, too.  And as they watch my future snack food fall into one hundred calorie packages, and as they load trucks headed for my grocery store, do they long to sneak a bite to fill their stomachs, but stop short because they know the dreadful consequences?

I hesitated to write this for three weeks because I wanted to present viable solutions.   I wish I had answers. To say, "just give more money to the poor," is an easy, vague cop-out.  We all tried once to take up our mom's threat to send our vegetables to starving kids in China, but she never did ship that box, did she?  But somehow we must connect our personal eating habits to giving, to make it real, and more than a mere impersonal monetary donation.  I did have the idea that maybe whenever we eat out we should commit to giving a donation equal to the amount of our bill to a ministry that is feeding the starving.

Do you have ideas?  How can we truly share our food with those who are hungry and have no means to obtain it themselves?

Viktor Frankl's "A Man's Search For Meaning"

In preparation for this Sunday's message, I pulled a book from my shelves.  I purchased Man's Search For Meaning while a student at seminary.  Those days were filled with books I had to read, leaving little time or energy for the books I wanted to read.  I am now trying to fill my time with the latter...

I remember hearing about and reading excerpts of Viktor Frankl in both philosophy and theology classes.  I repeatedly heard that Frankl discovered that concentration camp inmates who lost hope quickly lost their lives, while those who retained hope often retained their lives! This concise, but insightful, work on the subject of meaning, suffering, and hope just cannot be ignored.  I concur with one reviewer - I could barely put it down.

I read this short work in order to hear Frankl's perspective on the necessity of hope. Interestingly, he rarely use the word itself.  Rather, he focused on the subject (as the title suggests) of finding meaning.  Frankl pushes existentialist philosophy beyond the mere acceptance of the reality of suffering to the discovery and acceptance of the meaning of suffering.  He regularly quotes Friedrich Nietzsche, "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how."

The value of Frankl's work is his firsthand description of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, coupled with his professional training and experience as a psychiatrist before and after his imprisonment.  He recognizes the limits of his personal experience, but also makes the most of his experiences.  He writes of what he witnessed in others and in himself.

Frankl's thesis is to show the various ways that prisoners found meaning in the midst of and in thedoes life have meaning right here, right now, or is it now meaningless? He writes, "It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future."  A few pages later, he writes of the consequences of failing to see a future: "The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed."
experience of sufferings that included starvation, beatings, and the constant threat of death by extermination.  Frankl discovered that the central question asked by the prisoners was,

Frankl's genius, however, was not a simplistic solution of "well just find meaning..."  He pushes further.  He suggests that a person must hold on to the future (as something to look towards), find meaning in the present (as something to live for today), but also to take responsibility for his life's meaning.  Genius!  He writes, "we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us...Our answer [to the question of the meaning of life] must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.  Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks to which it constantly sets for each individual."  I think he is right on!  Too often we want to think about the meaning of life and then expect it to "just happen."  But the real heroes are those translate meaning into action!  Frankl even prophetically warns against societies who promote reflection without action!  Frankl also acutely noticed that a person's "meaning in life" is not vague and grand, but is specific and related to the time and place at hand.  In other words, our meaning in life can and does change - and so in every place and situation, we must ask ourselves what our meaning is here and now. Genius!

This idea is expanded upon in the second half of the updated edition which I read (published in 1963).  In this edition, Frankl adds a brief introduction to his therapeutic method, that which he calls logotherapy (a method to help patients discover and activate meaning in life).  He describes his method the "third school of Viennese therapy" (following Freud and Adler).  Frankl clearly, but gently, challenges a few of their ideas which continue dominate.  First, I appreciate his challenge of the human need for "homeostasis."  Frankl suggests that humans need tension, challenge, and "the struggle and striving of some goal worthy of him."  He suggests that expectation or demand for homeostasis results in a sense of meaninglessness.

Finally, and I think this is a great observation that applies especially to my own field of strategic, missional evangelism and outreach, is Frankl's teaching that we only experience meaning when we are others-oriented and world-oriented, not self-oriented.  He writes, "by declaring that man is a responsible creature and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be found in the world rather than within man or his own psyche...By the same token, the real aim of human existence cannot be found in what is called self-actualization.  Human existence is essentially self-transcendence rather than self-actualization...In other words, self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self transcendence."  In other words, we need to stop thinking about ourselves so much, and as we think more about others and the world around us, we will find ourselves happier and fulfilled!

I now know why Viktor Frankl's short work is so highly regarded.  It is moving, challenging, and deeply personal.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!