Seven Men: The Secrets to Their Greatness: My Kindle Highlights and Notes

2015 Reading List


Seven Men and the Secret of their Greatness
I've written about Metaxas' Amazing Grace Wilberforce tour de force previously here.  Metaxas hits his literary stride in 7 Men, offering a very readable and concise portrait of 7 key figures in the Christian faith (and the global stage).  One gets the sense that in these brief vignettes, Metaxas is more in his element than in the detailed minutiae of Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce.   I base this analysis solely on the episodes of his excellent radio show to which I've started listening.  His show reveals a natural intelligence and compassion, and most surprisingly (and welcomed), a silly sense of humor.  7 Men contains echoes of all these elements as the reader meets Jackie Robinson (in a more complete manner than you probably knew of him previously), Chuck Colson, William Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, George Washington, Eric Liddell and Pope John Paul II.

Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness by Eric Metaxas

You have 93 highlighted passages

You have 0 notes

Last annotated on June 26, 2015

And you’ll forgive me if I begin with John Wayne. “The Duke” is obviously not one of the seven men in this book, but many men of my generation have thought of him as something of an icon of manhood and manliness.Read more at location 122

Seeing and studying the actual lives of people is simply the best way to communicate ideas about how to behave and how not to behave. We need heroes and role models.Read more at location 132

Yes, sermons are important, but seeing the actual life of the guy who gives the sermon might be even more powerful. And you get the idea that how you live affects others. It teaches them how to live.Read more at location 139

Historically speaking, role models have always been important. Until recently the idea of having heroes and role models has historically been very important; but as I say, somehow this has changed in recent years. What happened?Read more at location 147

Well, it’s complicated. But it probably has something to do with the Vietnam War and with Watergate. Without a doubt these events helped accelerate a trend toward suspicion of the “official” version of things and of our leaders. Until Vietnam, all previous wars were generally seen as worthy of fighting, and the overwhelming cultural message was that patriotic Americans must do their duty and pitch in and help defend our country and our freedoms.Read more at location 152

George Washington is no longer thought of mainly as the heroic “Father of Our Country,” but as a wealthy landowner who hypocritically owned slaves. Many of us have forgotten the outrageous and spectacular sacrifices that he made and for which every American ought to be endlessly grateful.Read more at location 163

It’s true that thoughtless idol worship is never a good thing, but being overly critical of men who are otherwise good can also be tremendously harmful. And it has been.Read more at location 167

we have had bumper stickers that said “Question Authority.Read more at location 169

The golden mean, where we would question authority in order to determine whether it was legitimate, was passed by entirely.Read more at location 173

it is vital that we teach them who they are in God’s view, and it’s vital that we bring back a sense of the heroic. The men in this book are some of my heroes and I am thrilled to be able to share them with others. I hope they will inspire young men to emulate them.Read more at location 191

Can anyone doubt that the idea of fatherhood has declined dramatically in the last forty or so years?Read more at location 197

blessings and every gift—and strength is a gift—are God’s gifts, to be used for his purposes, which means to bless others. So men are meant to use their strength to protect and bless those who are weaker.Read more at location 225

The true leader gives himself to the people he leads. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. Jesus died for those he loves. That is God’s idea of strengthRead more at location 239

to have heart means to have courage. This is God’s idea of strength, to have a heart like a lion. A man who has heart can be described as lionhearted.Read more at location 263

that of surrendering themselves to a higher purpose, of giving something away that they might have kept.Read more at location 277

GEORGE WASHINGTON

But we must wonder, what exactly was it about Washington that put him forward as the first choice of the Continental Congress? John Adams joked that he met every qualification: he was tall and handsome, and he moved gracefully—qualities evidently lacking in the other candidates. But there were serious reasons too. For one thing, Washington was rich, so he was considered immune to enemy bribes. That was an important consideration at the time. And he had a sparkling reputation; he seemed to make a grand impression wherever he went. As one Connecticut observer noted, “He seems discreet and virtuous, no harum-scarum, ranting, swearing fellow, but sober, steady, and calm.”22Read more at location 575

One biographer notes that in the final big battle of the war, in Yorktown, Virginia, “Washington dismounted, stood in the line of fire, and watched.”25 No one disputes that he was tremendously brave.Read more at location 601

Washington also believed that God had a special purpose for his life, and he spoke of his belief that Providence had saved him from being killed in various early battles precisely because God had a purpose for him.Read more at location 620

“Let the hospitality of the house with respect to the poor be kept up. Let no one go hungry away . . . provided it does not encourage them in idleness.”29Read more at location 624

Washington apologized for the delay, saying, as he unfolded the spectacles and put them on: “Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.Read more at location 742

Who can imagine that the liberty of millions might depend on the character of one man? What was it that gave him the strength to do the right thing when the temptation to do something less noble must have been overwhelming?Read more at location 749

If the leader of the army that had defeated the most powerful military force on earth had indeed stepped down, as was being reported, George III declared that man would be “the greatest man in the world.”47Read more at location 757

the British, in defiance of the peace treaty, still kept troops on American soil. Read more at location 786

Washington had wrestled with the slavery issue for much of his adult life, and in July 1799, he finally made an important decision. He rewrote his will, not only freeing his slaves but also ensuring that the young ones would be taught to read, write, and learn a trade, and that the old and infirm ones would be taken care of for the rest of their lives.Read more at location 812

WILBERFORCE

that Wilberforce was the most successful social reformer in the history of the world. Read more at location 897

Pitt and Wilberforce proved up to the task, and Pitt knew that he never could have succeeded without his ally and friend Wilberforce beside him. The two friends were suddenly at the dizziest pinnacle of power and prestige. But it’s what happened after this that makes Wilberforce one of the great men in this book of great men.Read more at location 985

“God Almighty,” he wrote, “has set before me two Great Objects: the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.”11Read more at location 1071

fully 25 percent of all single women in London were prostitutes.Read more at location 1097

Suddenly he saw what he was blind to before: that God was a God of justice and righteousness who would judge us for the way we treated others; that every single human being was made in God’s image and therefore worthy of profound respect and kindness; that God was “no respecter of persons” and looked upon the rich and the poor equally.Read more at location 1107

For the first time in his life, Wilberforce saw the world through God’s eyes. But he was living in a culture where almost no one saw things this way. So the task that lay ahead of him was impossible. How would he do it?Read more at location 1116

But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing. Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.Read more at location 1135

At its core, every battle worth fighting is a spiritual battle. Those men were able to succeed only because they humbled themselves and entrusted the battle to God.Read more at location 1162

This brings us to the second way that Wilberforce did what he did. The one-word answer is prayer. Wilberforce prayed and read the Scriptures every day, and he prayed with many others over these issues and concerns. He also memorized lots of Scripture.Read more at location 1165

It should be said that this Christian community known as the Clapham Circle did not happen by accident. On the contrary, it was the deliberate creation of Wilberforce’s dear friend and relative John Thornton,Read more at location 1181

To us, this behavior sounds rather normal, but in his day it was not the fashion for fathers to spend much time with their children or to observe the Lord’s Day as Wilberforce did. He sent a powerful cultural message that family was important, and being a good father and family man meant spending quality time with one’s family.Read more at location 1211

Thanks in large part to Wilberforce, most of the Western world today believes that those who are fortunate have some obligation to help those who are less fortunate.Read more at location 1221

Of course this view is the antithesis of God’s view, but it was tremendously widespread. This is really more an Eastern Karmic idea of why people suffer and struggle. In India, a Brahmin would never dream of helping an Untouchable, because their misery was thought to be due to their bad Karma; they deserved their misfortune. One’s wealth was thought to be due to one’s good Karma, and was therefore deserved.Read more at location 1225

Dramatic as it sounds, Wilberforce’s tremendous efforts to change this mind-set over the course of many decades can rightly be seen as one of the most significant accomplishments in history. It was a radical idea, taken by one man from the Gospels into mainstream British culture at a time when the British Empire was huge and tremendously influential.Read more at location 1229

Until Wilberforce and his friends were able to change the culture of elite London and England, these ideas of helping the poor and those less fortunate were essentially unknown.Read more at location 1235

LIDDELL

So Liddell is remembered today for one reason. He was willing to make an almost impossible sacrifice: not only the greatest prize in sports but also the chance to bring honor to his beloved country—not to mention fame, fortune, and glory to himself.Read more at location 1315

But their return passage to Canada turned out to be even more dangerous than the previous trip to England. Their ship was part of a fifty-ship convoy, which was accompanied by cargo ships; warships of the Royal Navy provided an escort. Hitler’s U-boats found them nonetheless, and a German torpedo struck the ship carrying the Liddells. Happily, it was a dud, and the Liddells survived unharmed. Other ships in their convoy were less fortunate. Before the voyage was finished, the Germans had sunk five of them.Read more at location 1659

So during these chaotic months he found the time to write a devotional guide that he titled Discipleship. Each month had a different theme, such as “TheRead more at location 1699

Nature of God,” “The Character of Jesus,” and “The Holy Spirit.” The book is still available today.Read more at location 1700

He was literally God-controlled, in his thoughts, judgements, actions, words to an extent I have never seen surpassed, and rarely seen equalled. Every morning he rose early to pray and read the Bible in silence: talking and listening to God, pondering the day ahead and often smiling as if at a private joke.31Read more at location 1810

And he has great plans for each of us. Those plans may include the need to give up something we value highly. But those who give up what we may most desire—if God has demanded it—the Lord will truly honor.Read more at location 1835

BONHOEFFER

Throughout his life, Bonhoeffer was not afraid to learn from those with whom he disagreed. Bonhoeffer earned his PhD at the startlingly young age of twenty-one.Read more at location 1960

Bonhoeffer explained that the idol worship that Hitler was encouraging would make him not a leader but a “mis-leader.” He would mislead the German people, with tragic results.Read more at location 2048

people, on hearing of Bonhoeffer’s death, regard it as a sad and tragic ending. And of course to some great extent it is precisely that. The idea that this profoundly good and brilliant thirty-nine-year-old man who was engaged to a beautiful young woman was executed just three weeks before the end of the war is nothing if not tragic and sad. But if we stop there, we miss the larger and more important reality. We miss precisely what Bonhoeffer lived his whole life to illustrate and what he most desperately wanted each of us to realize: that anyone who pays a price or who suffers for obeying God’s will is worthy of our celebration, not our pity. And if someone goes to his death as a result of obeying God’s will, this is even more true.Read more at location 2217

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether in our human fear and anguish, we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly blessed event in the world? Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.Read more at location 2227

Bonhoeffer really believed that obeying God—even unto death—was the only way to live. And it was the only way to defeat evil. In his famous book The Cost of Discipleship, he wrote: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”11 This was the life of faith in the God of the Scriptures. To accept the God of the Scriptures is to die to self, to embrace his eternal life in place of our own, and to henceforth banish all fear of death. For Bonhoeffer, this was the only way to live.Read more at location 2245

JACKIE ROBINSON

Mallie found employment as a domestic to a white family, and she worked hard to teach her children the value of “family, education, optimism, self-discipline, and above all, God.”1 She saw to it that her children were in church on Sunday and taught them the value of prayer.Read more at location 2275

But Jackie’s older brother Mack was an even bigger star. He was such a gifted runner that the United States sent him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he won the silver medal, right behind his teammate Jesse Owens!Read more at location 2287

One day, Jackie met a Methodist preacher named Karl Downs. Downs had a tremendous ability to inspire young people. He knew that Jackie was a Christian, and taught him that exploding in anger was not the Christian answer to injustice. But he also explained that a life truly dedicated to Christ was not submissive; on the contrary, it was heroic. Jackie’s mother had taught her son the same thing, but now, coming from Karl Downs, it struck him in a new way.Read more at location 2310

As he and Rachel grew closer, Jackie continued his historic and attention-getting performance in college athletics. He became the first UCLA athlete to letter in four sports: football, baseball, basketball, and track. In 1940, he also won the NCAA Men’s Outdoor Track and Field Championship in the long jump competition, leaping twenty-four feet five and a half inches. In basketball, Jackie won the individual league scoring title with 133 points, despite an injury to his hand; but, he was still not named to the All-League Cage Team. The California Daily Bruin cried foul in its March 5, 1941, issue, calling the vote a “flagrant bit of prejudice” and a “miscarriage of justice.” That it was.Read more at location 2338

Jackie next joined the Honolulu Bears, a semipro team with the Hawaii Senior Football League.Read more at location 2348

Jackie found a job at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, not far from his mother’s home.Read more at location 2355

Joe Louis himself was also stationed at Fort Riley. The world-famous boxer had enlisted as a soldier to help his country and boost morale. Robinson vented his frustrations to Louis, who decided to use his connections to improve the young man’s situation. Louis contacted someone he knew in the White House, who in turn contacted someone else, and Robinson promptly received his officer’s commission.Read more at location 2361

(But he was allowed to play table tennis, and in 1943 became the US Army’s champion player!)Read more at location 2379

There were still civil rights battles to be fought, but Jackie would not live to see them waged and won. On the morning of October 24, 1972, Rachel was fixing breakfast when Jackie raced from the bedroom to the kitchen. Putting his arms around his wife of twenty-six years, Jackie said, “I love you,” and collapsed. He died of a heart attack in an ambulance headed to the hospital. He was just fifty-three.Read more at location 2682

POPE JOHN PAUL II

Of all the great men in this book, there is only one who has come to be called “the Great.” John Paul the Great. Let’s find out who he was.Read more at location 2752

The image of his father on his knees in prayer would never leave Karol Wojtyla.Read more at location 2768

Rather than asserting that either the begetting of children or the communion of spouses was the “primary end” of marriage, Wojtyla’s sexual ethic taught that love was the norm of marriage, a love in which both the procreative and unitive dimensions of human sexuality reached their full moral value.9Read more at location 2896

While all this was going on, Wojtyla was made archbishop of Krakow in 1964, and just three years later, Pope Paul VI would make him a cardinal.Read more at location 2915

Because he was sixty-five, no one dreamed that the new pope was only thirty-three days from death. But very soon after the shortest papacy in history came to its shocking and abrupt close, the cardinals had to convene once more. David Aikman sets the scene: This time, the mood was tense not simply because of the crisis of such a short papal reign, but because there was no longer any consensus on another candidate. The options seemed so wide open that, for the first time, the assembled prelates took the possibility of a foreign pope seriously.11Read more at location 2928

And though a Pole himself, he even spoke in Italian. With a smile, he began, “Jesus Christ be praised!” and then went on: Dear brothers and sisters, we are still grieved after the death of our most beloved John Paul I. And now the most eminent cardinals have called a new bishop of Rome from a far-off land; far yet so near through the communion of faith and in the Christian tradition.Read more at location 2955

His inspiring words rang out above the crowd: Be not afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ’s power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind. Be not afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization, and development. Be not afraid. Christ knows “what is in man.” He alone knows it.15Read more at location 2974

They felt it as an inherent contradiction, not realizing that John Paul II’s views as a whole, including the ones they approved and the ones they disliked, came from the same source: the pope’s fervent, long-held belief that we are created in God’s image, that we are his beloved children, and that all of our rights, freedoms, and responsibilities come to us from him. That underlying belief drove everything from his stand on sexuality, contraception, and abortion, to his ongoing fight against communism. It was all there, in the writings and teachings of his lifetime, and yet for some reason few of his ideological opponents seemed to figure it out, or fully comprehend it if they did.Read more at location 2999

Levi and Allison note, John Paul II’s papacy would continue just as it began: as a surprise. He would surprise the papal staff, who frankly could not keep up with him. He would surprise liberals by tightening discipline on the clergy of the Church. He would surprise conservatives with his heartfelt pacifism and ecumenism. He would surprise the Romans by being a more hands-on bishop than any Italian in recent memory.19Read more at location 3021

“He thanked God not only for saving his life but also for allowing him to join the community of the sick who were suffering in the hospital.Read more at location 3029

The press seldom acknowledged the remarkable courage and selflessness of his stand. Many members of the US mainstream media, for instance, fervently supported embryonic stem cell research and were far more apt to make heroes of those with Parkinson’s and other disabilities, such as Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve, who fought to advance it. Ironically, in doing so, the media missed a truly heroic story of the man who took a firm stand against what appeared, at the time, to be in his own self-interest. (As it happens, later developments in the research brought into question the effectiveness of treatment with embryonic stem cells. But just a few years ago, the popular narrative was more or less that the use of these cells would be the cure to end all cures.)Read more at location 3058

I am not a Roman Catholic, and I certainly share many of the Protestant reservations about some aspects of Catholic doctrine and some forms of Catholic devotionalism. Yet it is my view that Pope John Paul II, in his profound spiritual depth, his prayer life, his enormous intellectual universe, his compassion and sympathy for the oppressed, and above all in his vision of how Christians collectively are supposed to live, is the greatest single Christian leader of the twentieth century.Read more at location 3110

CHUCK COLSON

offices of Tom Phillips, Raytheon’s CEO.Read more at location 3237

At Phillips’s home,Read more at location 3253

“I would go to the office each day and do my job,” Phillips recalled, “striving all the time to make the company succeed, but there was a big hole in my life. I began to read the scriptures, looking for answers. Something made me realize I needed a personal relationship with GodRead more at location 3254

Great Sin: Pride.Read more at location 3262

Over and over as he sat there in the car, Chuck asked God to receive him. It was a humble prayer by a man the world knew as anything but humble. As Chuck relates in Born AgainRead more at location 3288

Then he read the famous passage in Lewis’s book where Lewis lays out the three alternatives in no uncertain terms, saying that Jesus was either Lord, liar, or lunatic. The alternative not open to us is to think of Jesus merely as a powerful moral teacher. It was clear and it was discomfiting. Chuck knew that in his encounter with the mind of C. S. Lewis, he had met his match. The man’s logic was irrefutable.Read more at location 3312

They were part of the Fellowship, a fiercely bipartisan group of Christians who met regularly for prayer. The leader of this group was Doug Coe, who had begun the National Prayer Breakfast during the Eisenhower administration.Read more at location 3334

After the sentencing, Chuck had to face the media on the courthouse steps. What he said there was not what the assembled members of the Fourth Estate were expecting. It was not what anyone was expecting to hear. In fact, what he said was as staggering as the harsh sentence. “What happened in court today,” Chuck said, “was the court’s will and the Lord’s will. I have committed my life to Jesus Christ and I can work for him in prison as well as out.” What Chuck said was quite true, but he didn’t know at the time that this extraordinary statement would prove to be prophetic.Read more at location 3394

Chuck continued to study his Bible and read voraciously. He was especially impressed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, which the German pastor and theologian had written during the two years he was imprisoned by the Nazis. This book began for Chuck a lifelong appreciation of Bonhoeffer and his writings. He realized that if Bonhoeffer hadn’t been in prison, he never would have written those letters. This was part of how God showed Chuck that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28 NASB). Even prison.Read more at location 3458

Nevertheless Chuck took his friend’s advice, and that night in his cell, he prayed, giving everything to God. “Lord,” he prayed, if this is what this is all about, then I thank you. I praise you for leaving me in prison, for letting them take away my license to practice law—yes, even for my son being arrested. I praise you for giving me your love through these men, for being God, for just letting me walk with Jesus.Read more at location 3481

He wouldn’t give Chuck a ten-day furlough. He decided to release Chuck permanently. In a moment, without a hint that this was a possibility, Chuck Colson was a free man. Was it a coincidence that after he had really turned everything over to God and felt truly free that this happened—that he was literally freed? Chuck didn’t think so.Read more at location 3492

sharply focused—of smiling men and women streaming out of prisons, of Bibles, and study groups around tables. These mental images lasted but a few seconds, then they were gone. I had never experienced anything like it before or since.19 Chuck was not the sort of Christian who would then or in the future talk much about mystical experiences. He was an extremely rational man. But he could not deny that this vision had occurred. What did it mean?Read more at location 3530

1976, Chuck wrote his first book, Born Again, which exploded onto the best-seller lists, and the term born again entered the popular lexicon as a description of someone who had a life-changing experience with God. Chuck soon made the commitment to devote himself full-time, for the rest of his life, to serving God in America’s prisons. He also began deepening his knowledge of Christian teachings, meeting with Christian intellectuals and philosophers, such as Richard Mouw, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Stephen Monsma, R. C. Sproul, Dr. Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer, Os Guinness, and Richard Lovelace. He read the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, Paul Johnson, and fellow prisoners Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Chuck became convinced that it was absolutely necessary to develop a Christian worldview—a comprehensive framework regarding every aspect of life, from science to literature to film to politics.Read more at location 3562

Commenting on a tragic school shooting in l998, Chuck said: What’s happening to our children? The first thing we must understand is that only a biblical worldview of human nature can make sense of these murders. The Bible makes two things clear about humanity. First, we are created in the imago Dei, the image of God, and knowledge of right and wrong is implanted on the human heart. But we’re also warned that we live in a fallen world—and that the human heart is desperately wicked. These two facts require any civilized society to make the moral training of its young its number one priority. . . . The great criminologist James Q. Wilson says all of his studies have led to the same conclusion: Crime begins when children are not given adequate moral training, when they do not develop internal restraints on impulsive behavior.Read more at location 3571

Chuck established the Centurions Program, which accepts one hundred serious Christians each year into a yearlong distance-learning class in which participants learn about worldviews—the Christian one and those that compete against it—and develop a project in which to teach what they’ve learned to theirRead more at location 3581

former bank robber named Mary Kay Beard convinced him to start a ministry called Angel Tree; ordinary people purchase Christmas gifts for the children of prison inmates and give them on behalf of a parent in prison who has no means of giving gifts to his or her children personally.Read more at location 3584

Chuck so admired William Wilberforce that he set up the Wilberforce Award, given annually to a Christian who confronted social injustice, often related to human slavery. Winners include Philippine leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., Bishop Macram Max Gassis, and Baroness Cox of Queensberry.Read more at location 3595

“Evangelicals and Catholics TogetherRead more at location 3599

Manhattan Declaration, which calls for the church to defend the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage, and freedom of religion.Read more at location 3612