As I was sitting around the fire last night with some friends, it came time for theological question time.
The spotlight was put on me to throw out some profound question that had to do with God or spirituality, but I just couldn't think in time.
As I was processing, one of the girls spoke up and threw this one out: Does everybody have one thing that they're never willing to give up?
Her example was giving up her bed for someone else. As she talked about why it was so hard, I thought of one thing that I would never give up.
But, I couldn't seem to get away from the question underneath the question - which was
Where did this notion of "giving up stuff" even come from?
For me, I never even considered the subject relevant until I started reading the Sermon on the Mount.
Some people say God wills it, others say Jesus said it, and still others say it's a good thing to do. It's part of being a good person.
In reality, when push comes to shove, we have this tendency to give up stuff, don't we?
Whether it's the friend who's going through some hard stuff and needs some of our time or the homeless person on the street who needs some of our money or the stray dog in the yard that needs some of our attention,
We all have this thing inside us that draws us to give up something at any given moment - whether we want to or not.
But, then there's this other side to the story of giving stuff up, and it sadly happens more I think within the evangelical community than anywhere else. It's this idea of "God says to do it, so I should, because God says to do it, so I should, because God says to do it . . . "
And so, for some people including myself, we develop this whole concept of giving stuff up based on the objective viewpoint that we should because God says to do it.
And then we give stuff up, and we don't want to. And afterwards, we regret it or maybe we feel happy about it or maybe we feel like God is pleased or maybe we feel that God's anger just got withheld a little bit longer.
The whole concept of giving stuff up becomes an institution without a face. The actual people who we give stuff up for become objects who receive. Our focus becomes on satisfying the need within us to fill up the something that's missing through giving stuff up.
The problem I have with this giving-stuff-up concept isn't that it's a good concept. The problem I have is that sometimes I can do stuff that I really don't believe in. My heart can be totally out of it, yet my hands and feet can be totally in it.
And that's the real tension right?
It's not what we're giving up or how much, but how we're doing it.
Lets be honest. If we don't want to give something up, we're not going to right?
And, if we do want to give something up, we're going to right?
As humans, we're not wired to continuously do things that are against our inner desires. We've all had the family member or friend who kept asking for money and gas and food and even though we kept giving and giving and giving we eventually just . . . fell . . . apart. We couldn't do it anymore.
And we had to say no. And we may have tried to rationalize the no by saying things like God wouldn't want this for me or God wouldn't want this for him/her or simply this isn't right.
But what if the whole concept of giving stuff up wasn't supposed to be about anyone else but ourselves in our efforts to tap into a freedom that was paradoxically found in having less?
What if the whole time we were giving stuff up, we realized that we had been worshiping an institution, or a concept, or an idea of a god who demanded its people to give up stuff in order to please it? And all this time, as we were doing what we thought this god demanded, we were finding that we weren't finding life, but turmoil?
What if the whole concept of giving up stuff was supposed to be about tapping into a source of life that is full of energy and vitality, and we didn't necessarily have to beat our heads against the wall about what people were doing with the stuff we gave them or where our stuff was going or how it was being used, but in the end we found that with less stuff we were more dependent personally on a God who wanted us and wanted relationship with us
and
we just couldn't see it because we were so busy trying to give up stuff.
I believe that the God I believe in is the same God that pulls on your heart strings when you have a friend in need.
And this God loves us so much that he/she doesn't want us to think that we have to give up stuff in order to please or appease him/her
but
knows that with less stuff we find more freedom to live in peace, joy, and love.
The spotlight was put on me to throw out some profound question that had to do with God or spirituality, but I just couldn't think in time.
Her example was giving up her bed for someone else. As she talked about why it was so hard, I thought of one thing that I would never give up.
But, I couldn't seem to get away from the question underneath the question - which was
Where did this notion of "giving up stuff" even come from?
For me, I never even considered the subject relevant until I started reading the Sermon on the Mount.
Some people say God wills it, others say Jesus said it, and still others say it's a good thing to do. It's part of being a good person.
In reality, when push comes to shove, we have this tendency to give up stuff, don't we?
Whether it's the friend who's going through some hard stuff and needs some of our time or the homeless person on the street who needs some of our money or the stray dog in the yard that needs some of our attention,
We all have this thing inside us that draws us to give up something at any given moment - whether we want to or not.
But, then there's this other side to the story of giving stuff up, and it sadly happens more I think within the evangelical community than anywhere else. It's this idea of "God says to do it, so I should, because God says to do it, so I should, because God says to do it . . . "
And so, for some people including myself, we develop this whole concept of giving stuff up based on the objective viewpoint that we should because God says to do it.
And then we give stuff up, and we don't want to. And afterwards, we regret it or maybe we feel happy about it or maybe we feel like God is pleased or maybe we feel that God's anger just got withheld a little bit longer.
The whole concept of giving stuff up becomes an institution without a face. The actual people who we give stuff up for become objects who receive. Our focus becomes on satisfying the need within us to fill up the something that's missing through giving stuff up.
The problem I have with this giving-stuff-up concept isn't that it's a good concept. The problem I have is that sometimes I can do stuff that I really don't believe in. My heart can be totally out of it, yet my hands and feet can be totally in it.
And that's the real tension right?
It's not what we're giving up or how much, but how we're doing it.
Lets be honest. If we don't want to give something up, we're not going to right?
And, if we do want to give something up, we're going to right?
As humans, we're not wired to continuously do things that are against our inner desires. We've all had the family member or friend who kept asking for money and gas and food and even though we kept giving and giving and giving we eventually just . . . fell . . . apart. We couldn't do it anymore.
And we had to say no. And we may have tried to rationalize the no by saying things like God wouldn't want this for me or God wouldn't want this for him/her or simply this isn't right.
But what if the whole concept of giving stuff up wasn't supposed to be about anyone else but ourselves in our efforts to tap into a freedom that was paradoxically found in having less?
What if the whole time we were giving stuff up, we realized that we had been worshiping an institution, or a concept, or an idea of a god who demanded its people to give up stuff in order to please it? And all this time, as we were doing what we thought this god demanded, we were finding that we weren't finding life, but turmoil?
What if the whole concept of giving up stuff was supposed to be about tapping into a source of life that is full of energy and vitality, and we didn't necessarily have to beat our heads against the wall about what people were doing with the stuff we gave them or where our stuff was going or how it was being used, but in the end we found that with less stuff we were more dependent personally on a God who wanted us and wanted relationship with us
and
we just couldn't see it because we were so busy trying to give up stuff.
I believe that the God I believe in is the same God that pulls on your heart strings when you have a friend in need.
And this God loves us so much that he/she doesn't want us to think that we have to give up stuff in order to please or appease him/her
but
knows that with less stuff we find more freedom to live in peace, joy, and love.
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