“Why does my heart feel so bad? Why does my soul feed so bad?” All year, You’ve had the strangle moral imperative to joy buzzing around my ears. It could be that I’m putting too much stock in a single command of Paul’s. But with:
“get to” being the word of the year,
Travis having made such an impression on me with the primacy he assigns to joy, and
all the specific words that have come to me on the subject this year,
it has been hard to avoid. And more than ever, the role of joy as an anchor for the words I say to others remaining words of life and not words of death has become apparent. I may not need to dig the well of self-love in order to love others, as so many folks extrabiblically claim, but I do apparently need to dig the well of joy: I have spoken brusquely again and again in recent weeks—this despite all the recent emphasis I have placed in my mind on letting “all my words be full of grace.” Why? Because it’s “out of the overflow of the heart” that “the mouth speaks.” If I feel despair, resentment, embarrassment, or any of joy’s other foils, I will not be able to keep those feelings off my tongue. Hence my alienating Carla yesterday evening after ending the workday feeling embarrassed and guilty that I had wasted an hour (at least) trying to coax ChatGPT and Gemini into providing me with business-hours difference formula I could use in a Salesforce report for Mike when a simple, classic Google search would have led me straight to the answer I sought. Hence my boorishly declaring my annoyance to Carla midmorning today after I spent two-and-a-half hours reviewing the College Township timeline into which she herself has put uncounted hours, a double layer of resentment (her absence and my feeling dragged into it). If I am unhappy, I am more likely—far more likely—to inflict my unhappiness on those around me. As such, digging and tending the well of joy—guarding my heart, as it were—is a moral prophylactic. Joy waters love. If any sentiments might be blocking or contaminating that well, I must spend the time and thought necessary to clear those sentiments out.
I deal with interruptions and pop-up requests at work much more gracefully than I do at home. I haven’t yet internalized and automatized “doing everything without grumbling or arguing” (Philippians 2:14). This despite the facilitation that my realizing that the Prime Desire is always fulfillable should bring. I must be missing a piece at home, something I have at work but don’t have at home. What is it?
At work, I’m glad when work piles up. At home, that stresses me out. At work, when someone approaches me about something they want done, I smile and sometimes even thank them for the cool thing to work on. (Naturally, this is not true when the thing they’re approaching me about is something I built that has broken.) But when someone approaches me about something they want done at home, I grumble and resent.
What are the contextual differences that might account for the differences in my response?
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). There’s a synergy between these three commands. It’s easier to rejoice when you’re praying continually and giving thanks in everything; it’s easier to pray continually when you’re rejoicing always and giving thanks in everything (after all, to whom are we to give thanks for things like existence?); it’s easier to give thanks in everything when you’re rejoicing always and praying continually.
But all these require that you be here now and do what you’re doing, thinking not of other things.
“I would have to learn to live in a different way, seeing death as an imposing itinerant visitor but knowing that even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living” (Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air, emphasis mine). I want to carry this thought with me all the time as I age; it teaches me how to relate to others, all of whom will die someday, and how to relate to myself, who will also die someday.
The Bible says nothing about the importance of setting or achieving goals per se. If you set no goals, yet you love—that is, if you act as though God and those around you are important and their good matters to you—you’re doing alright. If you achieve no goals, yet you love, you’re doing alright.
That’s it! I think that for me, although I know in my head that this is what I should want, I actually really want other things. If I truly only wanted to love Him and others, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly, to rejoice, pray, give thanks and make peace, then I would have opportunity to do what I want, every moment of every day. But I find in myself anger at setbacks, annoyance at disruptions, fear of failure to accomplish something, longing to be understood and liked, and desire to “feel good” through a panoply of means which I have discovered over years of living. So my prayer lately has been: “God, I am powerless even to want what I know I should want!”
me:
I hear you! “I am powerless even to want what I know I should want.” True.
Some disjointed follow-up thoughts:
For my part, l am so motivated by a desire to steer clear of feeling bad (angry, disgruntled, disappointed, frustrated, resentful, petulant, argumentative) that I’m thrilled to have found a Desire that is always fulfillable.
That this Desire is so prosocial and thus means that I can apply my dopaminergic drive toward the production of the more durably happyifying serotonin is a major bonus.
I think ridding ourselves of our secondary desires is neither advisable nor possible. John doesn’t write that we should shed the yearnings of the flesh and the yearnings of the eyes and the pride of our estate—he writes that we shouldn’t love those yearnings and pride. The trick is to subject those desires for other things—even if those things are plainly altruistic—to the absolute lordship of Jesus the Messiah and His Father, who usually do not require specific action but rather only the fulfillment of The Royal Law.
friend:
Hence discerning the “will of God” is kind of a fool’s errand since we know His will and we have secondary desires. Where I used to work, we used to say “love God and do what you want.” I always hated this because the some people took that as, “Sweet! I love God—and I’m going surfing. Screw those hard missions.” Yet I think your point remains.
In any event, we could also say “If you acquire and achieve all the most kingdom-focused secondary desires you could think of, but you don’t love, you lost the plot!”
me:
I think there are two kinds of people in the world: those who need to ask “What do I want?” and those who need to ask “What’s the right thing to do?”
As for “love God and go surfing,” I talked with another friend about that this morning. We agreed that there there’s nothing wrong with going surfing, and that if you surf in joyful thanksgiving to the Lord, it is worship. However, we also agreed that if all you do is eat, drink, and surf, showing no concern for the things that concern God, it can hardly be said that you love God. That’s the corrective.
I have many such desires. This world is overstuffed with opportunities to do and enjoy good. But it doesn’t often matter which I choose to fulfill, or even that I fulfill any of them at all. What’s important is that I fulfill the Prime Desire to do the will of God—even, I should emphasize, when that Desire runs counter to my secondary desires.
This frees me to accept interference, interruptions, and redirects (most of which come in the form of other people’s secondary desires), or to at least field them gracefully, without grumbling or arguing.
Over the summer, my primary prayer for myself was that everything I do, say, and think be done, said, and thought in total love for You and love for those around me like they’re myself. A week or two ago, that prayer became more specific: that all my talking be full of grace (gift), as though seasoned with salt. And today, You’ve narrowed the focus even more: Let me do everything without grumbling or arguing. In the thick of this stressful period of home improvement that has often heavily dampened my mood and occasionally strained my relationship with Carla by its insistence that I keep working and my frequent ignoring of that insistence because of my antipathy for this kind of work—I couldn’t think of a more perfect directive. Thanks.
I am deeply, intrinsically inclined to be subject to nothing and to no one. I wish to be in my own driver’s seat as much as possible. Yet, as Burkemann writes, there is a direct relationship between individual sovereignty and loneliness. I do not wish to be subject to loneliness. Moreover, I am, by dint of my creaturehood, unavoidably subject to the Lord of all. That’s true whether I’m acting so or not. Hence, trying to live my life by exercising unalloyed individual sovereignty is both maladaptive and false. What’s more, the Lord of all actually explicitly commands me to subject myself to others and even says that unless I die, I will be alone.
Yet a clear pattern has emerged in my own life: I do not initiate much social activity and decline much of it that is offered to me. I do this largely because I have used my considerable, insistent autonomy as a waymaker for productivity, energy preservation, and, to some degree, spatial and other kinds of order in our household. As a result and as predicted by Burkemann and Jesus alike, I feel more and more alone.
So what’s the trick? Bend my powerful autonomy to intentionally subject myself to others. Here I don’t mean volunteer to serve people, like when they’re moving or something. I have no problem doing that. I mean three things that I’m not already doing consistently:
When someone proposes a social activity, join in!
Initiate my own social activity, too!
And when I’m among others, be intentional. Engage. Be fully there. Bring my whole, powerful self—my “loving others really well,” my “tremendous interpersonal skills” and potential for being “one of the best communicators out there”—to the table.
My independence and power themselves are assets to others—but only if I exercise them for the sake of and in subjection to others.
In any given day, myriad people and circumstances will be both out of my control and impinging on my own autonomy. What will I choose?
I’m aware this may sound silly to a public audience, but a very aspirational nickname for myself occurred to me today while in the DiamondBack second-floor kitchenette: T.S. Lovejoy. The “T” stands for “thankful” and “thoughtful.” I want to be T.S. Lovejoy. (I am motivated by words. How much more motivating will I find an epithet?)
I’ve only ever heard linguistic relativity (the idea, called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis when I was in school, that language influences worldview and cognition) discussed with an eye on perceivables, such as colors and “snow.” (This may be a function of my non-erudition.) I’m told the hypothesis is still merely a hypothesis and very much in dispute.
But if you apply the hypothesis as a lens to help understand our grasp of abstractions, such as what we talk about and think about in ethics, then my study of forgiveness, the confusion surrounding it, and its supposed pitfalls suggests to me that a version of the hypothesis focused on definitions of words representing abstractions is indisputable: If you say forgiveness is required, it matters very much to your worldview and thinking—not to mention your moral performance—how you define forgiveness. Same with love.
“All things are permitted for me, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted for me, but I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). And again: “All things are permitted, but not all things are of benefit. All things are permitted, but not all things build people up” (1 Corinthians 10:23).
After another morning waking up in the 4 o’clock hour and failing to fall back to sleep, I find myself freer than usual of my scruples. And I mean that as a good thing. Lord, let me not be mastered by anything except pure love for You and those around me. Not mastered by my own schedule, not mastered by my own scruples, not mastered by my own habits, not mastered by my own compulsions, not mastered by my own prior intentions, not mastered by my premade plans, not mastered by fear of embarrassment, not mastered by fear of overextension, not mastered by greed—none of these things, except insofar as they are coterminous with pure love for You and for those around me.
This should make room for more spontaneity, as it already has today. What’s more, I’ve freely moved at whatever pace I’ve wanted to. My natural pace is happily fast. I’ll just sometimes need to somewhat modulate my pace and intensity for the sake of others.
Just finished watching “What’s in your bucket?,” a sermon given by Greg Davidson Laszakovits this past Sunday at University Baptist & Brethren Church, because I was out of town but want to drink from the same wells as fellow UBBCers when I’m away. Its point is simple: In light of James 2:14-20, your bucket list ought to contain goals of service.
I write about it neither because it was an amazing piece of oratory, although it was perfectly fine, nor because it changed my life. I’m not even necessarily recommending anybody else watch it, although it is only fifteen minutes long. Instead, I write about it because:
of how well it jibes with a drumbeat I’ve been trying to sound since my period of religious doubt in 2015–2016 and how happy it makes me to hear this sort of thing from a pulpit: What God really wants from us is good fruits and the good works that lead to them. Moral performance, or at least earnest moral effort. Following Jesus is first a moral demand, not an affective one. Affect can help. A lot. But affect can also disguise corruption and complacency; and also because
it’s an example of a holy expansionism on the part of God’s kingdom that makes me smile. Culture has a newly popular aspirational concept like a “bucket list”? Great! “You may keep it,” says the Lord. “But it’s Mine.”
As I recall, on the basis of a misinterpretation of Romans 4:17b (“calleth those things which be not as though they were”), Charismatics have been trumpeting fake news as a disciplined, God-mandated spiritual practice for decades. This makes them unusually comfortable with and skilled at newspeak and doublethink—about current events and moral performance both—as well as prone to interpreting everything they claim and hear as being of heavenly import.
This helps me understand part of our current national political scene.