<< In Pursuit of the Good Life | five >>

7:50am seemed to come too soon each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (although I actually am a morning person).

It was the penultimate class session of Honors Systematic Theology, and if you thought your mornings were unusual, try discussing the intricacies of Calvinism, the problem of evil, and human freedom with about twenty other about twenty year olds when you've hardly been awake for half an hour.

It was my turn to lead discussion. White paper crinkling with my page flip, I read my fourth question aloud:

"The author gives Abraham as a positive example of living: "he was willing to risk everything, in order to be in obedient communion with God, having faith that God would provide a sacrifice (Gen. 22:14)" (190). We're further told to live a "given over" lifestyle of self-sacrifice, following the example of Jesus (193). Has the concept of "risking everything," being "sold-out for Jesus," and being tapped into the Gospel's power grown out of proportion?

Her hand immediately shot up from the back of the room, and my blue-squared-glasses, black-brown long bobbed (not) Calvinist candor-spewer spoke up: This is something I'm really passionate about. I think this concept has gone way out of proportion.

Red Christmas-sweatered, orange haired graphic designer spoke up, too. Do we have the wrong concept of obedience?

You see, if we are so frustrated that we're not living "sold-out," what's behind this frustration? Do we think that, if we are not "sold-out," then we are not pleasing God -- that this "sold-outness" is what obedience must look like?

This seems much more likely.  

Not sold-out "enough" (not going to that foreign country, not talking about Jesus profusely to every person we meet, not having "profitable enough" quiet times), we are not obedient enough. Lacking obedience, we are displeasing God (the last thing we want).

You see, our desire to obey and please God may be taking away our ability to actually do precisely this. We desire obedience to the point that our "obedience" isn't what it could be. 

Instead of speaking kindly (and thanking the One who is the most kind), we chastise ourselves over how we could have spoken more kindly and then maybe we would have had that conversation that would lead us to our ultimate, "fulfilled" destiny of moving abroad and helping orphans (because this is the destiny most pleasing to the Lord).

We are never "good enough" in our obedience, and it keeps our obedience from being focused on the Savior as we focus on us, the sinner.

To put it bluntly, our obedience is becoming our idol.

We can become more concerned with achieving the God-pleasing level of obedience that we neglect being focused on the God we are trying to please.

To put it bluntly, in our idolatrous excuse for obedience, we are loving ourselves more than we are loving the Lord.

"If only we served him more deeply..." "If only we lived a life a little more 'sold-out'..." What's in those questions? We. We is central.

Our idolatry requires repentance, and it requires a change in the way we think. What if we stopped keeping such close tabs on ourselves to the point that all we see is us and our tabs? What if we decided to simply commit each day to the Lord and trusted that, as He knows our hearts are set on obedience, He's going to continue to guide?

What if we simply accepted the idea that God has placed us where we are for a purpose, and maybe the biggest "missing it" with our lives is when we miss Him and what He has for us in each moment?

• What if we chose to obey in our minds? Obey by thinking of what is right, excellent, and worthy or praise (Philippians 4:8)? 
• What if we let our "good enough" or "not good enough" actions take a secondary role?
• What if we let the reality of His goodness give us peace despite our "striving"?
• What if we accepted we are not perfect but this gives us a perfect opportunity to be perfectly dependent on Him?

I don't know exactly what this would look like, but I say let's find out.

<< In Pursuit of the Good Life | four >>

Maybe the inclination has always been here--here, within me: to question the meaning out of life and to question the life right out of myself.

Questions.

They've been fodder to the fire of my life, sometimes fueling dreams, goals, and actions and (other times) burning thoughts, attitudes, and choices that were meant to remain.

I asked more this week.

The Student Government meeting went shorter than usual, and we cared to spread the care of the school's care packages. Over a hundred KitKated, trail mixed, and gatoraded boxes later, we moved upstairs and grabbed orange plates and dinner food. We then sat, and the conversation led to a place I'm all too familiar. In the context of having the desire to do something for God but taking on the pressure to do something for God, I asked.

What is the meaning of life? What is the guiding principle that influences the choices you make?

• We talked about pressure: self-put pressed that's made all the weightier through twisted-biblical basis. 
• We talked about self-condemnation: of hanging onto the pressure so much that you are never enough but pressured to do more better faster.
• We talked about decision: that we can continually go in circles without ever finding a way out because there's always more factors we could use.

The end of the conversation exposed one concept, a concept that may be the beginning of the key to freedom from the twisted pressure to make a difference and change the world.

Jesus.

"Salvation is found in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

 
I have so (so so so) many thoughts of the implications of this one word and am honestly not even sure where to start.

But maybe that's just it. We are prone to starting in the wrong place in this discussion of world-changing pressure.

What do we start with? We start with the commands to go, do, surrender and apply them to our individual existences. How do we apply these ideas? What do they make us think? What do they mean for us?

Yes, these questions can be healthy. Analysis can lead to very good results. However, they betray a deeper reality: an anthropomorphic worldview, a man-centered way of viewing reality.

It's self-centered.

"Then Jesus said to all of them, if anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it" (Luke 9:23-24).

We put the pressure on ourselves to figure out how we need to best serve the Lord to the point that we forget to honor the Lord of whom we are trying to serve in everything--even in our questions.

We allow the questions to pile up as we think that we're actually doing some higher calling, as we're just "figuring out what the Lord wants," as we are just seeking to serve Him more.

But this can lead to disobedience: to sin.

We get so stuck in wanting to please the Lord that we get suck in our minds in places that aren't pleasing to Him: as we are consumed with all things about how we are doing and not enough with what's He's already doing and the privilege it is to follow Him.

We can neglect joy that's totally unrelated to our performance.
We neglect thankfulness for what the Lord's given.

Perpetually exploring the unknown of how to better, best, perfectly do our lives, we forget to honor God, the giver of life. We forget this: that we know who He is. His majesty. His greater purposes beyond the individual.  

Maybe we need to start with re-evaluating what we think we know (these commands that give us such pressure) and start with what we actually do (Jesus, and the humbling reality of who He is).