Fundamentalist.
If you wanna build, you gotta learn how to make a box.
If you wanna draw, you gotta figure out how to make rectangles, ovals, and triangles your friend.
If you wanna read, you gotta nail down the alphabet.
11-year old boy painting on canvas outside on warm dry summer afternoon.
If you wanna learn physics, you gotta believe in gravity (or produce evidence au contraire).
If you wanna do engineering, you gotta know math.
If you wanna do math, you gotta get decent at counting to ten.
If you wanna play hard, you gotta figure out how to work hard (or work smart).
If you wanna be an artist, you gotta be curious and learn how to execute and finish your big ideas.
If you wanna build and maintain good relationships, you gotta build little moments over time that matter when the big stuff hits hard.
If you wanna be a good parent, you gotta commit to consistently trying, consistently improving, loving unconditionally, accepting proactively, and challenging appropriately,…and modeling what it means to give your attention well.
If you wanna be a follower of Jesus, you gotta reflect his most important command.
If you need a reminder of what it was…well, that’s a fundamental.
It’s never too late to learn and relearn the fundamentals.
If you wanna get really good at something important to you, chances are that you’re gonna have to get good at the fundamentals.
In that regard,
I am a fundamentalist.
The little things matter, and those little things often build up to create big things.
Just like little people grow up to become big people, and
little ideas grow up to become big ideas,
and little habits and patterns and fundamentals grow up to become a unified synthesis representing growth, accomplishment, and competence in a particular area.
It’s okay to be a fundamentalist. The fundamentals matter.
The fundamentals are how you become proficient and knowledgeable within a certain area. They provide a strong launching point to reach for greater understanding, greater skill, greater proficiency in which all the fundamentals you’ve learned and practiced come together…
…and when your fundamentals are strong enough, you can let your imagination, your creativity, your intellect, your soul soar, knowing that fundamentals aren’t the end game. They’re how you get to something important.
Believing Jesus is more than a mortal wise man; believing that he is who he said he was and that he died and was resurrected to offer the gift of salvation to everyone…that’s a fundamental Christian tenet. By definition.
Believing that Science is absolutely wrong and Genesis is absolutely and unquestionably right about the exact chronology and literal timeline interpretation of Earth’s creation is…not a fundamental. Some - or many - might call it a fundamental. But I disagree.
I believe there is room for discussion, debate, conversation, dialogue, and learning, and that fundamentalism, the way I see it, can exist, strangely, in a vibrant, stimulating, and even intellectual discourse.
But we gotta be serious about two things with fundamentals:
The fundamental is not the thing. Because you can catch a pass doesn’t make you a great wide receiver. Because you can draw a straight line doesn’t make you an artist. Because you can brush your teeth doesn’t make you a dental hygienist. The fundamental is not The Thing. Fundamentals are integral building blocks , or root systems, to get you to The Thing.
There has to be some criteria and consensus about determining what the necessary fundamentals are within a particular area. And that’s why you gotta look to the extremes: at the little building blocks (fundamentals) on one side, and the the giant big picture narrative on the other (The Thing). Then you gotta figure out what’s necessary to get to The Thing.
I think Jesus gave us a pretty good road map for The Thing when asked about the most important commandment. Doesn’t mean there’s nothing else important. Means that it was so important that he considered it a fundamental.
11-year old boy building a box crate scooter out of old wood.
If we are Christians, we must extend the fundamental human right to everyone - those we know and those we don’t; those we like and those we don’t; those in our communities and those who are not; those whose lives are similar to ours and those who do not - we gotta extend to everyone we are able…
…the fundamental human right, asked and expected by Jesus, to love.
To love God. To love our neighbor.
And that fellow, the fellow crucified on a cross, gave pretty good examples of how to love, especially how to love the unloved and the unaccepted.
Jesus. As a radical, he gave us the fundamentals to be Christian.
I’m working on it.
Shabbat shalom, all. ❤️
