Neal Bascomb has written The Perfect Mile (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2004) in which he recounts the 1950’s story of the pursuit of the four-minute mile by Roger Bannister, Wes Santee, and John Landy. For those of us who love running, the book is a delight.
In its earliest pages, Bascomb writes: “All three runners endured thousands of hours of training to shape their bodies and minds. They ran more miles in a year than many of us walk in a lifetime. They spent a large part of their youth struggling for breath. They trained week after week to the point of collapse, all to shave off a second, maybe two, during a mile race—the time it takes to snap one’s fingers and register the sound. There were sleepless nights and training sessions in rain, sleet, snow, and scorching heat. There were times when they wanted to go out for a beer or a date yet knew they couldn’t. They understood that life was somehow different for them, that idle happiness eluded them. If they weren’t training or racing or gathering the will required for these efforts, they were trying not to think about training and racing at all.”
What I hear Bascomb saying is that the men said a lot of “no’s” in order to reach one huge “yes”: that perfect mile.
This is a picture of the disciplined life in which a purpose becomes so powerful that it is imposed upon body and soul and controls virtually every thought and every ounce of energy in a person’s life. My suspicion is that the top 5 percent of people in the arts and sciences, athletics, business, and scholarship are disciplined people with intensities similar to those of Bannister, Santee, and Landy.
So also the biblical heroes for the most part. Joseph, Daniel, and Paul come to mind as remarkably disciplined people. There are strugglers, of course: David and Simon Peter perhaps. Most of Israel’s kings ultimately failed at discipline, Solomon the most spectacular failure.
Discipline is not a popular subject among many in the faith today. It is countered with comments about perfectionism, compulsiveness, and the so-called works theology. Nevertheless, wherever you find men and women of deep spirit, ministries where lives are being transformed, and thinkers and artists who produce lasting ideas, you will find disciplined people.
Is it time for a renaissance in challenging ourselves to a tough-minded faith where Joseph’s pursuit of excellence, Daniel’s three-a-day prayer times, and Paul’s “pressing toward the mark” are highlighted as exceptional values in Christian discipleship? I’d like to think that, at this time in my life, I condition myself to be like Christ and pursue his mission for me as hard as I used to work out to win an 800-meter race. But I’m not sure.
Kingman Brewster said, “There is a tremendous satisfaction in losing your own identity in something that is much more important than you are.” (John 3:27-30 goes well with this comment.)
At an early-morning breakfast a physician comments to me, “I try to go to the hospital every morning with the high-minded intention of serving every person I meet—the patients, the hospital personnel, and my colleagues. But I discover that by noontime, I can barely remember the ideas I began the day with. Now it’s a fight just to survive for the rest of the day. The hospital can be a disabling place.” (How and what does one preach to a person like this?)
If you want to do some thinking today, get a hold of Michael J. Sandel’s article in the April 2004 issue of Atlantic Monthly, “The Case Against Perfection.” “What’s wrong with designer children, bionic athletes, and genetic engineering?” Sandel asks. And then this: “Eugenics and genetic engineering represent the one-sided triumph of willfulness over giftedness, of dominion over reverence, of molding over beholding.”
Cyprian to Donatus: “This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see. Brigands on the high road; pirates on the seas; in the amphitheater men murdered to please the applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians … and I am one of them.”
Gordon MacDonald is a pastor and author, chair of World Relief, and editor at large of Leadership.
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