(Stolen shamelessly from Post Secret.)

Found in the comments at Winds of Change:

Jim Collins wrote a important book called “Good to Great”, and in it he described a conversation he had with Admiral James Stockdale before he died (yes, Ross Perot’s running mate).

Stockdale was one of the most decorated sailors in naval history. He was a naval aviator shot down over North Vietnam and held in POW camps for over 7 years. He organized the prisoners and kept men alive and sane, including himself. To escape being used as a propaganda tool, he mutilated his own head with a razor so they couldnt be put on film. When they tried to put a hat on him, he used a stool and his fists to destroy his own face. No-one has ever sacrificed more or endured more for his country than James Stockdale did.

Collins interviewed Stockdale about his survival, and he asked him an interesting question: who didn’t survive and why:

“I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.”

“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier.

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say,‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: “We’re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!”

We must confront the most brutal realities and carry on with faith nonetheless. This is now known as the Stockdale Paradox, but it has been faced in every war by every people at one time or another. We are facing it now.

We must confront the most brutal realities and carry on with faith nonetheless. Precisely.

Beyond even this, our geographical and archaeological investigations have shown that the Christian religion is highly culturally conditioned, and the advent of historical criticism of the Biblical texts has shown the evolution of belief in Jesus as the Christ. In sum, the traditional Christian claims concerning the uniqueness, centrality and divinity of Jesus have been deconstructed. In the form that they have existed, from c.100AD through to c.1750 AD, they are no longer tenable. Using the language of idolatry, the Christian church has been progressively stripped of its attachment to idols, the idols of institutional authority and rational primacy. Instead of seeking certainty in God, the Church has succumbed to the desire to find certainty in worldly matters, in dogmas and institutions. In this situation there is a classic Christian course that the Church must follow. It must confess its sin, repent, and turn around once more, demonstrating through a renewed commitment to the life shown in Christ that it can truly incarnate the love of God that was demonstrated in Jesus. If it does not, the judgement that God has already shown upon it will prove terminal.

I wrote that a little while before I was first ordained. It’s intriguing just how far I have come (I came in through the liberal door). Sentences two and three I now find quite shocking. The rest I still agree with, pretty much.