Divine Priorities

Confession: I have been secretly envious of other people's priorities for years. My friend Glen holds his work-outs as a high priority. So high that he recently paid $15 for a 24 hour membership to a gym when he was out of town. I wish I could be like that. A pastor I know named David puts a high priority on writing sermons. He spends a minimum of 20 hours each week preparing his sermon. I don't. Another friend of mine named Jonathan puts a high priority on his food intake. He refuses to eat fast food. Period. I wish I had that kind of fortitude.

But I must be fair to myself and state that I have made a radical shift in my priorities over the last year. For years, my top three priorities went like this: 1) My Work in the Church, 2) My Self, and 3) My Family. A little over a year ago I started to shift those priorities. I was talking with a friend about this change a couple of weeks ago. She asked me how my priorities are ordered now. (I think the conversation was initiated by my recent post on Hear the Yawp called "Keeping Busy.") At any rate, I answered her with an atypical straightforward order: 1) My Family, 2) My Self, and 3) My Work in the Church. The answer felt good. Something seemed right about it. For years I have wanted that order, but for the first time, it was true. Then my friend asked me this question: "Where is God in that order?"

Her question got me thinking. According to what we've been taught in churches, it is a great question. The Church teaches that our priorities are supposed to be "1) God, 2) Family, and 3) Church." I answered her with a question, "What does it mean to put God first?" She replied, "You make it a point to spend time with God everyday." No shock there! After all, it's what we've been taught. "If your relationship with God is your top priority, you spend time with him everyday."

But that doesn't make sense to me. Really "good Christians" will spend about 15 minutes either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day reading their Bible or praying. The "Super-Christians" might spend 30 minutes per day, and the truly sanctified might actually spend one hour per day praying or reading the Bible. That just doesn't make sense to me. Reading Lamentations for 30 minutes out of my 24 hour day makes God my #1 priority? How is that possible? I spend three times that each day eating! I sometimes spend four times that amount of time returning e-mails! And I spend fourteen to sixteen times that amount of time each day sleeping! If priorities are measured in time, I'm not sure my relationship with God would even register.

I'm not so sure our "time with God" or our "relationship with God" needs to be charted on our timed scale of priorities. What would it look like if God wasn't one of the things on my to-do list? A place-holder on my list of priorities? What would happen if God was not the most important among many priorities? What would happen if my relationship with God, instead of being compartmentalized on my priority graph, began to influence and infiltrate every other thing that is on my priority list - family, work, exercise, nutrition, friends, etc? Would that change the way I live? Would that change the way we live?

Taught Wrong

"But I thought..."

"Well, you thought wrong."

It's fun to say, rough to hear. But what if it goes something like this?

"But I was taught..."

"Well, you were taught wrong."

It's amazing how you can be taught something for so many years and then find out that you were taught wrong. This recently happened to me with two simple words: the world. Now if you are like me and you've grown up at all around the Church, hearing or reading the world makes you remember phrases like, "Be in the world but not of the world" or "Don't be like the world." And images of the world involve people like whores, drug dealers, thiefs, thugs, gays, pedophiles, and people like that. You know...religious outsiders. The people that aren't in the Church.

It's what I was taught; it's what I assumed to be true. The world consisted of the people outside the church. Then I discovered something. Jesus talks about the world in a different light entirely. For me, it all came about when I was doing my reading in preparation for our church's Bible study. I was reading John 15:18-27. The whole passage is about this concept of the world hating Jesus' disciples because of him.

Okay. No real problem so far. Everything's lining up. The religious outsiders are going to hate us because of Jesus. Then I got to this little statement in verse 25:

But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason.

Did you catch that like I did? Their law? Whose law was it? It sure wasn't the whores and thiefs and the other religious outsiders. It was the Jews. It was the religious insiders, the most spiritual people of the culture. And then it "clicked." The outsiders never hated Jesus. It was the insiders who hated Jesus. It made sense. I've never been hated by the outsiders for living like Jesus. But there have been many times when I have been hated by the insiders for living like Jesus. (I should clarify here that there have been plently of times when I have been hated by the outsiders...but never bacause of living like Jesus. Outsiders hate me only when I act like I'm one of the insiders.)

This raises some pretty serious questions for the follower of Jesus, the person trying to live like Jesus. Like the familiar statement, "If the world (i.e. outsiders has a problem with you then you must be doing something right." According to how Jesus defines the world, that statement is wrong. Should it be more like, "If the Church has a problem with you then you must be doing something right?"

I think we have to be careful as we rethink this. Jesus doesn't say, "When the world hates you..." He says, "If the world hates you..." I think the goal is not angering churches. The goal is living like Jesus. Then we let the chips fall where they may.

But this idea of the world being the relgious insiders rather than the religious outsiders really has the potential to change things - the way we think and the way we live. I think the world has more to do with opposition to the Kingdom of God than it does a people group.

But that's not what I was taught!

Well, I was taught wrong...

Redirection

If you are just checking to see what I have written lately and only skimming through this page, you are missing some good stuff. Click here or click on the comment link below to take you to the great things others have been saying on the "God Bless" post.

Also, you no longer have to be a registered blogger user to comment. I invite you to post comments and join the conversation. If you have never commented, please note that I will approve your comment before I publish it. It's not that I'm into censorship; I just don't want someone placing hateful comments that degrade other contributors to the conversation. To date that has not happened one time, and I have never had to reject a comment. So please go deeper. You are invited to contribute to the conversation.

And thanks, Chris, for suggesting I put something about this on the main site.

God Bless...

I started thinking about something that I guess, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty trivial. But since triviality is something I have never been able to eschew, I thought I'd share it here on Hear the Yawp. What is the deal with "God bless?" I see it written on notes. I hear it on answering machine greetings. I hear folks say it on TV. It's one of those phrases that I see and hear all the time, but I have no idea what it's saying.

What does it mean?

Is it a prayer? As in God bless this house or God bless our family? If so, it's unfinished. God bless what?

Is it one of those things you're just supposed to complete yourself? Like I say to you, "God bless...," and you finish with whatever you need blessed - "my job" or "my country" or "my brakes" or "my kidneys."

Maybe it's not that we need someone to finish it for us; maybe naming the thing in need of God's blessing would just be uncouth. ...as in "God bless your fungus-infested toes or inflamed hemorrhoids or green-headed acne or abundance of fat cells or insect-repelling body odor?" It becomes a statement like, "We both know you are in need of God's blessing, but there's no way I am going to be so degrading as to name your problem out in the open for all to hear."

Or maybe it's just because our culture has become so isolated, self-centered, and individualized that we are sure other people need God's blessing...but we have no idea why. "God bless (you go ahead and fill in the blank because frankly I am too concerned with myself to be concerned with anything you are facing.)

I don't know; maybe it's something else. But I can say this: It strikes me as a trite, disconnected, meaningless waste of breath and phonetics.

It's just my opinion; your's could be different...

Keeping Busy?

Busy-ness. That's real power. It gives status. It rationalizes an infinite number of wrongs. It makes us feel useful. It dictates our meaning.

I'm not talking about business. One can ascend to the most elite level of busy-ness without ever going into business. No, I'm talking about the thing that gives Americans meaning...the thing that seems to make our otherwise pointless lives worthy of the four hours of sleep we get per night.

Busy-ness has become the heart of American culture. It is now the universal descriptor of our lives. As John Wesley's Methodist movement spread across America, leaders inquired of each other's lives with the question, "How is it with your soul?" Just a few decades ago, neighbors asked each other, "How's your family?" Then it moved to employment: "How's it going with work?" And now, when we really want to know how someone is doing, we ask, "Keeping busy?" And by chance if someone happens to ask, "How's everything going?" we make sure they know: "Busy."

But think about the answers: Soul? Fine. Family? Fine. Work? Fine. They didn't reveal much, but they at least indicated that there were no real catastrophes. "Keeping busy?" on the other hand, assumes catastrophe. Busy-ness is the ideal. It assumes, "Are you too busy to think?" "Are you too busy to spend time with your family?" "Are you too busy to get less than seven hours of sleep?" "Are you too busy to take a break?" "And please tell me you're too busy to take a vacation?" Yes, catastrophe is desirable, even admirable...even worthy of envy.

It's true. There have been numerous times I have found myself competing with my wife's stories of busy-ness at the end of the day. We have sat around in the living room or in the car "one-up-ing" each other. It's disgusting.

But she's my spouse. What about colleagues? Friends? Other family members? We have become slaves to busy-ness. It defines us. You are nobody until you are busy.

The great equalizer, it rationalizes (even pardons) a plethora of sins:

You forgot your son's baseball game? "I was just too busy."

You forgot your anniversary? "I was just too busy."

You didn't stop to help that stranded lady and her baby? "I was just too busy."

You didn't vote? "I was just too busy."

It's amazing how much is justified by busy-ness.

We were meant for more than busy-ness. We were meant for love, recreation, peace, worship, rest, work, discipline, creativity, reflection, and so many other wonderful things that busy-ness steals from us. Yet it is a thief to whom we gladly yield and submit.

The great god of busy-ness is a tyrant, oppressing his subjects with a trite pseudo-uselessness. The Creator-God weeps as we submit our lives to the imposter. Isn't it time we start living for more than busy-ness?