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About the Book
"Make Your Bed" by William H. McRaven is a motivational book that emphasizes the importance of small tasks in achieving success. Drawing upon his experience as a Navy SEAL, McRaven highlights how making your bed every morning can set the tone for a productive day filled with discipline and accomplishment. Through practical anecdotes and life lessons, the author encourages readers to adopt a mindset of resilience, determination, and positivity in order to overcome obstacles and make a positive impact on the world.
Rich Mullins
Born Richard Wayne Mullins on October 21, 1955, in Richmond, IN; died on September 19, 1997, in La Salle County, IL; son of John and Neva Mullins. Education: Attended Friends University, Wichita, KS, late 1980s.
The talents of Contemporary Christian singer/songwriter Rich Mullins and his work with the group Zion were first noticed by Christian music superstar Amy Grant. The inclusion of his song "Sing Your Praise to the Lord" on Grant's Age to Age album in 1982 soon lead to deals with Reunion Records and the start of a successful career as a songwriter and singer. With nearly ten albums and numerous Contemporary Christian hit songs to his credit, Mullins's career was cut short by an automobile accident that took his life on September 19, 1997, in Illinois.
Raised near Richmond, Indiana, Mullins began writing songs in his head as he drove a tractor over the fields of his family's farm. He taught himself to play the piano at age four and soon mastered a number of other instruments as well, including the guitar and hammered dulcimer. Long before his birth, however, factors over which he had no control were beginning to shape the world in which he would grow up. In Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven by James Bryan Smith, the singer tells of some family history and how it came to affect his life: "My dad grew up back and forth between Kentucky and Virginia because his father was a coal miner. And when my dad was 14 my grandpa came home and told my grandma to load up the truck 'cause they were gonna move.... And my grandpa said, 'Well, Rose, we're going to Detroit.' And she said, 'Why in the world are we going to Detroit?' And he said, 'Because I don't want my boys to grow up to be coal miners.' And so they got as far as Indiana and ran out of gas--and that's how I got here."
As a boy, Mullins was known as Wayne, his middle name. Although he went by Richard when he went off to college and shortened that to Rich when he launched his music career, he preferred to be known as Wayne by his family. Mullins was particularly close to his mother, Neva, who was raised a Quaker. He admits, however, to having been somewhat embarrassed by his father, who was raised in the heart of Appalachia, "which is a very polite way to say that he was a hillbilly," Mullins told Smith. Mullins said that it was not until he was nearing the end of high school that he began to understand the true meaning of the biblical injunction to "honor thy father and mother." In Smith's book Mullins is quoted: "[I]f you cannot honor your father and mother, then you can't honor anybody. Until you come to terms with your heritage, you'll never be at peace with yourself. That was a real breakthrough moment for me. So, what I needed to do was come to understand the Appalachian life, so that I could know more about my father, who had been a stranger to me all my life."
In 1974, after finishing high school, Mullins attended Cincinnati Bible College in Ohio, working as a youth minister in a local church. A couple of years into college, he formed a band of his own. The band only stayed together for about a year, and during that time it performed Christian music at schools and colleges throughout the Cincinnati area. In the late 1970s Mullins left college to work with Zion Ministries and perform with their band, aptly named Zion. In the summer of 1981 a copy of an album recorded by Zion--made up mostly of songs written by Mullins--found its way to Christian singer Amy Grant. The up-and-coming Grant and her managers were impressed by Mullins's "Sing Your Praise to the Lord" and decided to include it on Grant's next album, Age to Age, released in 1982. Mike Blanton, an adviser to Grant and founder of Reunion Records, signed Mullins to his first publishing deal as well as his first artist deal.
Mullins's first album for Reunion, self-titled, was released in 1986 and includes such songs as "Place to Stand," "Elijah," and "Few Good Men." He followed that in 1987 with Pictures in the Sky, which includes "When You Love," "Be with You," and "Verge of a Miracle." Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth, Mullins's third album for Reunion, was released in 1989 and features "Awesome God," "Other Side of the World," and "If I Stand." Also hitting music stores in 1989 was Never Picture Perfect, which includes the singles "I Will Sing," "While the Nations Rage," and "First Family."
In 1988 Mullins moved to Wichita, Kansas, to study music education at Friends University, a nondenominational Christian institution. While studying at Friends, he continued to record and perform whenever he could. In 1991 and 1992, he released two volumes of a compilation entitled World As Best As I Remember It. After completing his studies at Friends, Mullins joined a Compassion International mission to the vast Navajo Reservation in Arizona to teach music to the local children and spread the Christian gospel to whomever he could reach. As part of his work in the Navajo Nation, he formed a music club for some of the younger residents. In May of 1995, he moved to the Navajo Nation, settling into a trailer adjacent to the reservation. He lived there with fellow musician Mitch McVicker, and the two were involved in a project to collect musical instruments for the children of the reservation.
Throughout his career, Mullins has been nominated a total of 12 times for Dove Awards, presented each year to the best in Contemporary Christian music. He never received the award, but close friend Doris Howard told Release magazine that he probably didn't mind. "Nashville didn't own Rich, but then, he cared nothing for the things of this world."
On September 19, 1997, the Jeep in which Mullins and McVicker were traveling from Chicago to Wichita overturned on Interstate 39 in La Salle County, Illinois. Both men were thrown onto the road from their vehicle. A tractor trailer following close behind swerved to miss the Jeep but instead hit Rich, killing him instantly. McVicker, though injured critically, recovered.
Rich Mullins's Career
Joined Christian group Zion, late 1970s; released self-titled album for Reunion Records, 1986; recorded total of nine albums of Christian music for Reunion, 1986-96; wrote several Contemporary Christian hits, including "Awesome God" and "Sing Your Praise to the Lord"; studied music education, devoted time to relief efforts among Navajo Indians of the Southwest, mid-1990s.
What Is Life’s Ultimate Good
Dear Dan, I agree; any view that has God as the foundation of morality — like the Christian view I described in my last letter — will have further, serious issues to address. In fact, your two objections get at the most central ones. Let me respond to both. What Makes God’s Laws Good? Your first objection has a great pedigree and can be traced all the way back to Plato. Namely, what makes God’s moral laws — his moral values — good? Does he like these laws because they are good? Or are they good because he likes them? Either way seems to spell trouble for Christianity. Take the first option. Are God’s laws good because they meet some separate standard of good, one “outside” of God? If so, God has to defer to — is beholden to — some higher authority. And that’s impossible, according to Christianity. But the alternative seems just as bad. If God’s laws are good because he likes them, it makes morality seem arbitrary, dependent merely on his personal tastes or whims. After all, what if he had preferred things like murder, rape, and torture? Would these therefore be good? Do we really want to define “good” as “what God likes,” similar to the way “coolness” is just whatever the cool kids like? Wouldn’t this rob statements like “God is good” of all significance, reducing them to saying merely that “God is the way he is”? Again, neither choice looks very promising. So, which horn of the dilemma should the Christian choose? Goodness Is Godness I think the second option is the right one: God’s laws are good because he likes them. That is, anything that God likes or values is good by definition. Goodness just is Godness. So then, is the phrase “God is good” nothing but an empty tautology, saying no more than “God is God”? “Anything that God likes or values is good by definition. Goodness just is Godness.” Well, no. In this specific context, where we’re defining “good,” “God is good” tells us something informative — namely, that God’s values are what make things morally good. But in most other contexts, when we say, “God is good” we can generally take for granted which properties or characteristics go on the “good” list. In these ordinary cases, “God is good” expresses something different — for example, “Here’s what God is like: he hates lying, murder, stealing — things we all agree are bad.” But then, if goodness is defined as whatever God likes, doesn’t my view mean that murder and rape would have been good if God had liked them? In a sense, perhaps; at least their advocacy would have been included in his moral laws. But remember that we’re currently defining “good,” and I think some of the rhetorical force of the wouldn’t-rape-therefore-be-good objection comes from ignoring this context. After all, it seems that regardless of what we say ultimately “makes” something good, if that “good-maker” were different, good would be different. And in any case, the traditional Christian view of God holds that he couldn’t have liked these things, that it’s logically impossible for God to be different than he is, just as a square couldn’t fail to have four equal sides. It turns out, therefore, that things aren’t as nearly as bad as the objection initially implied. Why Follow God’s Moral Law? Then there’s your second objection: why should we follow God’s laws? Is it because, if we don’t, he’ll submit us to everlasting punishment? Should we follow God’s laws simply to avoid pain? Does it turn out, after all, that morality is merely a matter of might makes right? Well, I think Christians should acknowledge that avoiding pain and suffering is a good reason to follow God’s moral laws. Moreover, I concede that this would be a genuine problem — if this were the only reason for obeying God. And as I said, even this reason isn’t without its virtues. After all, if we think of God as a parent — which the Bible encourages us to do — it’s a perfectly good reason, morally as well as rationally. As children we often obeyed our parents, in part, to avoid discipline. In fact, this was the reason for discipline in the first place — to help motivate us to obey. But of course, our obedience wasn’t merely motivated by a fear of discipline. We also obeyed our parents because we loved and trusted them. We knew that their requirements were an integral part of their deep love and affection for us, that they gave us these rules to benefit us. Their laws were evidence of our parents’ love. This interweaving of love and law, this close relation between our love for our parents, their love for us, and their moral values (that is, their moral loves) usually resulted in us adopting their morals; their values naturally became our values. We liked these values. And it didn’t stop with moral values; we sometimes adopted our parents’ values about sports teams, movies, and music — again, sometimes simply because we loved them. So, according to my view, we ought to follow God’s laws because, ultimately, we want to — and the main reason we want to is that we love him. In this way, morality is ultimately personal and grounded in what we love. Meaning of Life The personal aspect of value isn’t limited to moral value; it’s a component of all value, including life’s ultimate value. What we might call life’s ultimate meaning or purpose is perhaps the most important topic of all. So, what is our ultimate value, meaning, purpose, or goal in life? Well, suppose you’re right that there’s no God. The meaning of life, then, would be like all value in a godless cosmos: subjective and relative. And because each person has his own values, there would be as many meanings of life as there are persons. In such a world, there would be no objective meaning that life has. But according to Christianity, humans have been made for something, for a purpose. Moreover, this purpose does not depend on us, and so, in this sense, it’s objective, human-independent. And because we were designed for a specific purpose, humans will only truly flourish and thrive by fulfilling this purpose. Fulfilling God’s purpose for us is life’s ultimate meaning. That doesn’t mean that, in a world without God, humans could not find some measure of meaning or value in things like family, work, art, gardening, or whatever. But unless these individual goods are put into the context of the much larger, overall purpose, they will never be as meaningful (to us) as they could be. Only by fulfilling this ultimate purpose is our meaning of life maximized. What Are Humans For? What is this larger context or purpose? What were we made for? We find a hint by noticing that, for many of us, relationships and community are what we most value, where we find our greatest fulfillment. We flourish best in community with people we love. And this fact is entirely in line with the Christian view that our ultimate purpose is to know and love the ultimate Person, God himself. Christianity is of one voice on this. As one famous confession says, our ultimate purpose “is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Indeed, God is a loving relationship, as odd as that sounds. The mysterious doctrine of the Trinity says that the Godhead is an intimate community of three (divine) persons. That’s what he is. (This is one reason why monistic religions can’t truly make sense of the view that God is love: Who was God loving before he created persons other than himself? Such a being couldn’t essentially be love; at best, he would need creatures in order to love.) “Our ultimate purpose is to know and love the ultimate Person, God himself.” Notice that the centrality of relationships is also evident when Jesus sums up all of God’s laws in just two: love God and love your neighbor. The moral law — and, not coincidentally, life’s ultimate meaning — is about relationships, both human and divine. God, then, created humans for his own purpose. Our purpose — the meaning of life — is also importantly objective, just as morality is: it is human-independent. Yet it’s obvious that we can and do reject God’s purpose for us. In fact, the gospel message — and the entire Bible — is predicated on such rejection. But God has given us another chance to truly flourish, to find ultimate meaning through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He has made this possible at an immense cost to himself. Dan, I get why you would reject Christianity, viewing it as you do from the outside. I hope you’ll continue to consider all this and at least begin to sense that genuine atheism might be a lot different from your current “kinder, gentler” version. I also hope that in the process you’ll reconsider Christianity’s claims — in particular, Jesus’s offering of himself and the relationship you were made for. Article by Mitch Stokes
