For several years I have been following the faith journey of Jason Zarharaides through his blogs. I have commented in the past how much his thinking and journey have paralleled my own. His life circumstances have been and are much different than mine. His journey has taken a path that is far afield from where I find myself. Inspite of that, his words resonate deeply with me. Here is his most recent post in which I found much similarity to my own journey.
“So soon as Christians agree to take responsibility for the outcome of history, we have agreed to do violence.” [Stanley Hauerwas]
This thought is worth some serious reflection on both political and personal levels: It is neither the Christian’s nor the Church’s task to rule this world nor make our mark on history. And the moment we shoulder that responsibility, we have agreed to do violence. Now this does not mean we simply huddle in a corner and gnaw on our fingernails with dread and worry. Rather, we are to take up our proper responsibility, marked first by the conviction of God’s sovereignty over life and second by the “downward Way” of humility.
In hindsight, it seems my entire adult Christian life was aimed, although unintentionally, at obscuring the true Gospel. I had one fiery passion. I wanted to change the world. I wanted the Church to change the world. I wanted to build a local church with members who would join its leadership in changing the world. I taught and programmed our church with the intent on helping others change the world. My life had purpose and I had big hairy audacious goals. And I was a man of violence.
Sure, if you had confronted me with that accusation, I would have denied it. Angrily denied it. I was doing God’s work of bringing his kingdom to earth. So please get the heck out of my way. And those around me suffered violence. Sure I didn’t physically abuse anyone. But my wife and kids had a husband and father that was constantly absent. And when I was physically present with them, I was usually mentally and
emotionally absent as I mulled over ways of improving my leadership and ministry or impatient with them for taking up my valuable time. My volunteer leadership suffered violence as I subtly forced my agenda upon their ministries or downright replaced them when they didn’t live up to my expectations. I mentally categorized people by what they could offer to our church by their strengths, wealth, and gifts. And I suffered violence at my own hands through stress, imbalance and a lack of any inward formation.
Now, I wasn’t a task master. I was a really nice man of violence. I tried treating people with respect. I tried to protect people from overworking in and overgiving to the church. I tried to pray for and care for everyone who came into and served our church. But my relationship with everyone was primarily shaped by my goals of building a church that would change the world. And so, my life and ministry incarnated the way of violence and took its toll on those around me.
I’m happy to say that God is rescuing me from that path. I can thoroughly appreciate Hauerwas’ quote:
“We can thus take the time to live in history as God’s people who have nothing more important to do
than to have and care for children.” I have been experiencing and continue to experience a worldview change. I no longer live each day with the passion to change the world. The well-being and care of my wife and my kids are the most important things to me. I “simply” (in quotes because it’s not a simple thing) want to be a good man to my family, friends, coworkers and any others God brings my way. I have a long way to go in this goal. And the only way to truly accomplish this is to enter into and follow Christ into his humility — the downward Way.
I used to measure my personal success by the amount of people I was influencing through conversations, preaching and writing. I’m now understanding what Fr Stephen says, that our goals should be measured by the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).
I still have goals, but they are very, very different than my previous ones. One of my personal goals is for my wife and kids to look back upon their lives and know that they were genuinely, unconditionally and constantly loved by me. That may sound simple, especially in a world that is wrestling with some dire issues. But in reality, authentic love is such a rare thing today. It doesn’t happen naturally because it requires a certain kind of life that most avoid.
Ann and I are visiting Clark and Vanessa in Iowa. Clark and I went fishing on the Mississippi River yesterday morning. It became quite an adventure. Clark’s boat and motor were given to him and the motor is 35+ years old and has been a little unreliable. We drove up river and launched about a mile or so below a dam where we were planning to fish. After going a half- mile the motor quit. We had a trolling motor so we fished and moved up stream toward the dam. It was slow but we got to our destination. After fishing unsuccessfully, it became apparent that a storm was brewing and we decided to head back because of the lack of a motor. Surprisingly, Clark was able to get the motor running and we got about half-mile before it quit again. Clark’s daughter, Lacey, called to tell us that a tornado watch was in effect and 60 mph winds with hail and lightning were moving in.