I love finding life insights in unexpected places. I'm reading a book on Prussia, a now-extinct German kingdom. Don't ask me why. But Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 is incredibly interesting and well-written.

Anyway, there is a section early in the book on pietism, the 18th century German Lutheran spiritual movement roughly analogous to Puritanism or evangelicalism. Looking at the remarkable achievements of one pietist leader, author Christopher Clark notes the strategy that outlasted other pietist projects:

Channeling the surplus spiritual energies of Lutheran non-conformism into a range of institutional projects.

What Clark means is: instead of endlessly criticizing the established church, this guy Hermann August Francke (and his followers) put enthusiastic young pietists to work in building universities, orphanages, Christian printing presses, various cross-cultural evangelizing projects, fund-raising networks, and more.

For a short generation, these people caught a vision of a remade society. They made a huge impact on the army’s chaplain corps, such that the officers’ swashbuckling style was replaced with sober dedication to excellence.

Surplus spiritual energies? I can see the point. It’s far easier to criticize than to build, and these people got it. Their children, it seems, didn’t. But we can learn from them. We can become builders instead of critics.

How? That’s the rub.