Einstein, Creativity, and the Battle with Conformity

Without hesitation, we who follow Christ affirm the unchangeable nature of His message.

However, the methods by which we deliver this fixed message should constantly be evaluated and often changed for advancing Christ's Kingdom in an ever-changing culture.

Fluid methodologies with a fixed message are the ticket for creative, thriving institutions.

Unfortunately, many institutional leaders reverse the pattern and find their institutions becoming increasingly irrelevant.

When methodologies are fixed and the message is fluid - whether it's a business, a team sport, or a church - the institution slides into a slow, irreversible death.

Within 10 seconds of walking into a building, one can tell the direction the institution is headed. If the building looks and feels straight out of the 60's, 70's, or 80's, and even 90's,  then it is dying. Methodologies for reaching people must change.

Leaders insecure about who they often find their identity in the things they do. That's why organizational change can become very personal.

Authoritative people demand conformity to established methodologies for their self-preservation. An organization must rid itself of authoritative, controlling, insecure leaders prior to realizing institutional advancement.

Take science and mathematics for examples.

One learns science or math through learning established, constant truths that never change. But it is often as difficult for creative geniuses to rise out of the institutional centers of science as it is for Christian leaders to rise out of the institutional and denominational conformities of religion because the methodologies of the institutions rarely change.

Albert Einstein was seventeen years old when he entered the German science and mathematics schools of Munich. Most German schools, including Albert's school, were run with a Prussian sense of military style and efficiency. The students were like privates while the teachers acted as authoritarian officers. Learning was regimented and mechanical with an emphasis on rote memorization and repetitive lessons.

Just like religious institutions.

Rewards were based on conformity and creative learning methodologies were stifled.

Einstein struggled.

Albert found the style of teaching - rote drills, impatience with questioning, and corporate conformity - to be repugnant. His beloved sister, Maja, made this observation of Einstein's feelings:

"The military tone of the school, the systematic training in the worship of authority that was supposed to accustom pupils at an early age to military discipline, was particularly unpleasant to Albert."

According to biographer Walter Isaacson, in his book Einstein, Albert developed a deep contempt for the authoritarian style and militarist atmosphere of German schools. One day when troops in a parade marched down the street where Einstein lived, and all the children came pouring out of their apartments to watch, Einstein refused to join in. He told his parents . . .

When I grow up, I don't want to be one of those poor people. When a person can take pleasure marching in step to a piece of music it is enough to make me despise him. He has been given his big brain only by mistake.

The Reason Einstein Began to Flourish Academically

In 1895, when Einstein was seventeen, his family moved to Switzerland for reasons associated with his father's business. Einstein enrolled at the cantonal school in the village of Aarau before his entrance into the Zurich Polytechnic School.

Aaru was a perfect school for Einstein. According to Isaacson,

The teaching was based on the philosophy of a Swiss educational reformer of the early nineteenth century, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed in encouraging students to visualize images. He also thought it important to nurture the 'inner dignity' and individuality of each child. Students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions, Pestalozzi preached, by using a series of steps that began with hands-on observations and then proceeded to intuitions, conceptual thinking, and visual imagery. It was even possible to learn - and truly understand - the laws of math and physics that way. Rote drills, memorization, and force-fed facts were avoided.

Einstein loved Aarau. Maja, Einstein's sister, said of the school,

Pupils were treated individually. More emphasis was placed on independent thought than on punditry, and young people saw the teacher not as a figure of authority, but, alongside the student, a man of distinct personality.

It was the exact opposite of the German instruction Einstein hated. His love for Swiss education and the freedom of individuality eventually led Einstein to renounce his German citizenship. Of course, the German system of worshipping human authority eventually led to the rise of one of the world's worst dictators just a four decades later.

Einstein later said of his year at Aarau,

When compared to six years' schooling at a German authoritarian gymnasium, Aarau made me clearly realize how much superior an education based on free action and personal responsibility is to one relying on outward authority.

Application for Evangelicals

(1). Young evangelical pastors and leaders need an institutional atmosphere where they are free to think and flourish in their own, individual, and creative ways according to how God has gifted each of them.

(2). Demands to submit to authoritarian control by blindly giving allegiance to established methodologies of ministry will thwart any Kingdom creativity and restrict new and more effective methods of reaching an ever-changing world.

(3). Effective missions and ministries come from the hands-on experience of doing new and creative things rather than hearing others declare how it ought to be done. Mistakes will be made, but mistakes of motion are always better than stagnation of status-quo. Methodologies should be fluid.

(4). The threat to the future of any religious institution does not come from more freedom. On the contrary, institutional death springs from authoritative leadership, tight controls, and fixed methodologies.

Ask Albert Einstein.