Something EpicEncouraging radical lives that matter

I’ve been thinking about the eternity aspect of life a bit lately.

There’s something that Brian, our pastor, says about the word “believe” and the way we use it now versus the way Bible writers used it. I’m going from memory here, but the idea is that when we say we believe something, we mean it kind of as an acceptance of a fact; after thoughtful consideration (in some cases!) we decide we agree with a premise.

In contrast, in Bible times, the connotation was a little bit different. To believe something was more of an action, or an understanding from which action couldn’t be separated. You couldn’t “believe” something without being physically changed. Really, this perspective makes a whole lot more sense. If you don’t live differently as a result of a belief, then it’s questionable whether you really believe it. Brian’s standard example here is fire: if you believe that the building you are in is on fire, you’re going to do something (whether it’s escaping, or helping others, or whatever). You’re not going to just sit there “believing.”

This brings up a lot of my questionable “beliefs,” particularly the things I say I believe in my head but my heart isn’t convinced. In the ancient context, there’s no way those could be considered beliefs; I think a more appropriate word would be “doubts” (and that’s really pretty depressing).

One of the most concerning things I “believe” but don’t act on is the Bible’s clear indication of what will happen in eternity. I “agree with the premise” of heaven and hell, but I’m doing next to nothing to encourage people in the right direction.

I guess the big question is, “If I really believed that there is someone actively trying to lull people into an eternity devoid of all joy, happiness, comfort, and meaning, wouldn’t I try to prevent that?” Because if I had someone right in front of me who was suffering from some physical trauma that I could help with, I would, no question. Or if I could prevent someone from being injured in the first place by quick action, I’d do that, too. So why do I take the much more serious, much more important threat so much more lightly?

I’ve read that somewhere around 27,000 children die every day, mostly from preventable causes. If I really believed that their (and their parents’ and neighbors’ and friends’) eternal fate was hanging in the balance, wouldn’t I do something to give them a better chance to experience God in this life? If I believed Jesus’ exhortation to care for the orphans and the widows, how is that I could sit here in my nice American house and ponder the meaning of words?

So by now it’s clear that I don’t believe in as many things as I’d like to think I do. The question I really need an answer to is, “How do I ‘keep the vision of eternity continually in [my] mind and the value of it in [my] heart’?” How do I believe?

Everyone has at least one driving force in their life, you know, the reason you do what you do. I’ve been trying to think objectively about what’s driving my life. On a day to day basis, it often comes down to deadlines: I choose what to work on based on what’s “due” next. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as I’m being sensible when agreeing to due dates.

On a larger scale, it’s a bit more complex. The book mentions guilt, resentment and anger, fear, materialism, and the need for approval as things that drive many people. I don’t really do guilt or resentment and anger much, and fear comes in only when I’ve over-committed myself.

Materialism? That one gives me pause. On the one hand, I’m definitely devoting most of my time right now to making money, but I don’t feel like it’s the promised “stuff” that’s driving me. What I really want out of it is freedom to spend my time however I want, and as far as I can tell, you either have to have good savings or good passive income to do that. Yes, I do want that touring bike, but that’s so I can spend my time touring rather than working (though maybe I should satisfy myself with my road bike to be able to afford the time off…). I don’t feel like I’m looking for “money as security,” just “money as time freedom.”

Approval strikes a chord, though. I really hate saying no to people I can actually help, particularly in my work. I want people to like me, to think I’m cool or helpful or kind. This is probably a major factor in my tendency to over-schedule, which of course results in providing worse service and then feeling pressure to work too much to keep people happy. Arg.

All of this stuff about “drivers” comes back to the idea of purpose being in control. “Knowing your purpose simplifies your life. It defines what you do and what you don’t do,” says the author. Well, I can see how that’s true, but I come back to my ever-present tension between inspirational ideas and the pragmatic reality of my day-to-day work decisions. If I understand what God has in mind for me, how do I decide which clients to take? Which projects to work on today and which ones to schedule out a bit? Or maybe I should be doing something entirely different with my skills and interests? It just all seems so theoretical.

And here’s a quote that’s almost painful to my dabbling, flitting self:

If you want your life to have impact, focus it! Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most.

I agree. In theory. But that just makes me want to wrap my arms around my knees and start rocking and humming.

One of the things I’ve long found interesting is the idea that God specifically chose the time and place for my life. I think people have always looked forward and backward in time and imagined themselves in a totally different environment, but the clear implication is that God didn’t want me to live during the Renaissance or in the Old West or whatever sounds intriguing at the moment.

Actually, most of the time I’m delighted to be alive right now, because I’m so excited about all the amazing things that the Internet is facilitating. I’ve been on the web since its early days of public availability, and it’s sort of a backdrop for a lot of my life. I love that. And now that I think about that, it seems highly likely that God had my current career in mind for me; is it possible that in another time I would have found fulfilling work that has nothing to do with a non-existent or evolved-beyond Internet? I’m sure that it is, but the fact is that God put me right here, in middle class America at the turn of the millennium for specific reasons, so maybe my line of work is inherently more meaningful than I give it credit for.

Of course, the flip side of that premise is a little harder to face: that God specifically chose some people to live in miserable places, like drought-plagued areas of Africa. Though come to think of it, those areas wouldn’t be nearly so miserable if humans would reject selfishness. I read recently that there’s a very large underground lake in the Darfur region of Sudan, where there have been such brutal actions taken, essentially over resources. There’s a tremendous resource right under them in this drought-prone region, but they’ve been too busy terrorizing their neighbors to develop it. (And that’s not to say that we in the first world nations have done nearly enough, either; it’s just an example of how human selfishness keeps people impoverished and exploited.)

I was reading an article in Good last night that talked about Buckminster Fuller’s vision for humanity:

He believed we could use human ingenuity and existing resources to solve global problems, as long as we committed “egocide.” “Selfishness”, he declared, “is unnecessary and … unrationalizable. … War is obsolete.”

Fuller was one of the first thinkers to publicly identify the global crisis of unbalanced resources that remains today. He set out to put that imbalance right by inventing models for efficiency based on nature. His motto was: “Do more with less.” He firmly believed that technological advances, if applied correctly, could allocate and manage the world’s resources in such a way that every member of the human race could live the luxurious life of a billionaire. “Technologically,” Fuller wrote in 1981, “we now have four billion billionaires onboard Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune.”

I think that’s absolutely true, except that we haven’t grasped that selfishness is unnecessary and unrationalizable. We rationalize it every day. But if God has given us everything we need to live without fear (of scarcity and violence), then I guess the blame for miserable lives lays squarely with us, doesn’t it?

That’s a hard truth to accept most of the time! I want it to be about me, about my interests and desires and goals. But this chapter points out that my “personal development” and success are not the same as my purpose, and if I confuse the two, I’ll end up “successful” but won’t fulfill my purpose.

I have a hard time with this somehow. It seems like purpose and my personal goals should be the same. Well, I guess they can be, but only if you go from purpose to goals, instead of from goals to purpose. One of the other major points is that, not having created ourselves, we can’t claim to determine our own purpose (the analogy given is an invention trying to decide what it was invented for). So to try to determine our purpose based on our preferences is backwards. I guess that makes sense.

So what does that mean for today? How am I supposed to go to work now and live like I believe it? The easy answer is to “make my goals God’s goals” but how do I do that? Today I have three client projects that need my time. I have several internal projects that also require my time. What does God want me to do differently? Does living for God’s purpose mean just doing work for charities and churches? Another pat answer that comes to mind is something along the lines of “do the work you have to do with integrity and as if for God.” I think that’s biblical but it seems so trite…