How to care about things (without being overwhelmed)

In one of the many film retellings of the classic story of Cinderella, Ever After, the formerly apathetic, self-centered, and purposeless prince says, "I used to think, if I cared about anything, I'd have to care about everything, and I'd go stark raving mad!" So he chose instead, for years, to care about nothing.

I wonder if that's how most Americans are today. We are constantly presented with so many causes and needs - with starving refugees in Africa, sex slavery in Southeast Asia, human rights abuses in China, environmentally destructive practices in the US, and countless natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Sandy in New York, not to mention the myriad of social and political issues on both sides of the worldview split. The sheer quantity and magnitude of the problems overwhelms us, and so we bury our heads in the sand and seek our own personal happiness while closing our eyes and ears to the needs all around us. Now, it makes sense that we feel overwhelmed. There really are more problems (and problems of larger scope) than we could ever hope to fully address with our limited time, skills, and resources - and how could we ever hope even to figure out which problem most deserves the time and resources we could give it? If we help to rehabilitate former prisoners in our local communities, do we need to feel guilty that we are not also helping to train and restore former sex slaves in Thailand? If we donate to food programs in refugee camps around the world, do we need to feel guilty that we are not donating to our local food banks? It's not difficult to picture ourselves suddenly snapping from the weight of it all and, in the words of the aforementioned prince, going "stark raving mad!"

But this madness is not by any means a necessary or unavoidable consequence of beginning to care about one problem or another. We just need to give ourselves the permission to accept our limitations and the command to work within them to best of our abilities. Acknowledging that we are fallible and limited simply by nature of being human allows us to truly care about one specific problem - and devote ourselves to its correction - without feeling guilty about all the other problems we don't have the time or skills to adequately handle. And once we truly care about something, it will be a joy, a source of meaning and purpose, to throw ourselves towards its resolution. I think all the half-hearted efforts we make in life stem from the absence of this genuine concern about the problem and the concomitant desire to see it resolved; that they are, in essence, the output of a guilty conscience prodding an apathetic will into temporary action. But if we let ourselves deeply and genuinely care about one or two problems (that we are capable of acting upon in tangible, relevant ways), and allow ourselves to dispense with guilt about all the other hundreds of problems in the world, we can start to act with our whole hearts, with a motivated will, and with real purpose.

And I have a suspicion that we just might find our capacity for caring and acting increased as we go about the process of living with purpose instead of apathy, until we have touched more lives and brought about more good than we ever imagined possible.

Acknowledging need

"It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little - however little - native luminosity? Surely we can't be quite creatures?
"For this tangled absurdity of a Need, even a Need-love, which never fully acknowledges its own neediness, Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become 'jolly beggars.' The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all the time this illusion to which nature clings as her last treasure, this pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet - or one foot - or one toe - on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not 'ours.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

This is not the way I naturally think, and I don't think it's the way most other people think either.We are ashamed of our Need, even our Need for God; we wish to be independent beings, possessing something utterly our own which we can then give to God and to other people. In fact, we don't want to admit that we are dependent on God, not just because of our sin, but because we are His creatures, the things He has made and whose life He sustains. I love the analogy in the first paragraph above: we want to have some light of our own, to shine bright with the goodness of our own being, instead of simply reflecting the light of God. But since we are His creatures, even if light did shine forth directly from us, it would still be His light that He put within us in the first place.There is nothing we can offer Him that He did not give to us, and because we are fallen we tend to need His help and encouragement even in that act of giving. And that is hard to accept, so I tend to fight it - I try to prove to myself, through continued efforts to be perfect, through the accumulated praises of people around me, through my own self-assessment in every situation, that I am a being who can live without Need and give freely of what is inherently my own to God and others: in other words, that I am a being like God in that I am my own self-sufficient person characterized by Gift-love rather than by Need-love.

But of course this is not true! So the fight becomes a lesson in failure and discouragement, or in self-righteousness and pride, depending on how the battles of the moment are progressing. In either case, there is no true delight, freedom, or consciousness of value. How could there be, when I am trying to live outside the constraints of reality? As Lewis wrote above, the false belief that we are self-sufficient, independent beings is what bars us from experiencing happiness. It imprisons us in continual striving for inherent personal perfection, in lies (believed in the heart if not spoken), in competition even with those we love the most, in the desperate fortress of pride faced with defeat. Having proclaimed to ourselves that we are Need-less - without Need of any sort, and particularly without that Need of God that infiltrates our whole being - we begin to feel that we are needless - meaningless beings without any greater purpose or worth. The One whom we need even to be truly ourselves is the same One who has made us able to meet the needs of people around us, given us a purpose and a meaning for our lives, and thus bestowed upon us greater worth than we could have ever made for ourselves. The One before whom we are utterly powerless, and upon whom we are dependent for life itself, gives to us His power, that we might live by His strength and do greater things that we could ever have imagined for ourselves. And the One who is a fountain of joy and love, apart from whom we are dark and hate-filled little creatures, will, if we will let Him, cause that fountain to spring up in glory within our very hearts, giving to us that which we could never earn or make for ourselves, but in the act of giving making it truly ours in Him.

Pursuing Christ, and letting righteousness follow

In Philippians 3, Paul writes of the surpassing greatness of the knowledge of Christ - how to know Christ is so much better than anything else that all those other things can be considered rubbish or even loss in comparison. What seems incredible to me is that knowing Christ is this much better even than being righteous. God wants us to be righteous (indeed, He commands us to be), and we have to be righteous to be in His presence with joy and love instead of terror and condemnation, but ultimately righteousness is not the highest goal. That distinction goes to knowing Christ. And it is so much more important and more wonderful to know Christ that all the labor and time we have invested into becoming righteous through the efforts of our flesh in submission to the law, even if it has made us as near perfect as humans can be, is loss.

What God desires is for us to know Him as He knows us, and becoming righteous is a part of that process. But sometimes I think we mistake the ends and the means, and we treat knowing God as a means to becoming righteous - we make our own perfection the goal we seek, and use our relationship with God as a tool in our labors toward that end. I know I sometimes think and act this way, anyways. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. God doesn't allow Himself to be used as a means to any other end (at least not for very long), because He is the only end in which we will find joy and fulfillment, and He wants us, if we will, to find the true happiness and meaning for which we were created. So in the end, if we have not sought to know Him first and wholeheartedly, we will lose all that we thought we had gained instead of Him. The castles of righteousness we had built so proudly on our own will come crashing down, because they were built on the foundation of our sinful nature rather than on the foundation of Christ. But if we seek Him - if we press forward toward that goal, the goal of knowing Christ, with all our heart and mind and strength - then we will find that we have not only found Christ and come to know Him, but have attained to righteousness as well: the righteousness which is from God by faith. And this righteousness obtained in this way is the only righteousness that will not someday be a loss to us, that will be in the end of any worth.

Lingering in beauty

Being a Type-A personality (that is, continually striving for perfection and efficiency), it can be hard for me to do anything slowly without becoming frustrated. Naturally, I don't sit back and enjoy the beauty and peace of a simple moment - I identify a task, complete the task as quickly and as well as I can, enjoy the sense of fulfillment at its completion, and then move on to the next task.

But those simple moments can hide some incredible beauty, and I think it is worthwhile for me to make the effort to slow down and linger in them while they last.

For example, on Friday afternoon I bought a bag of black beans in bulk, and needed to transfer them from the little plastic bag to a glass jar for pantry storage purposes. Now, these little plastic bags they use in the bulk sections of stores are really quite flimsy, and when I've tried to pour beans directly from the bag into a jar in the past beans have gone flying everywhere. Nevertheless, because it feels so much faster, I typically do it that way anyway, and just try to be especially careful. On Friday, however, for some reason, I decided to scoop the beans out and into the jar with my hands. It felt slower, because I could only pick up a certain amount at a time (not a full double handful, lest I risk dropping them) and then had to funnel them delicately into the jar (not too quickly, lest they bounce off the mouth of the jar). But as I let the beans fall from my cupped hands into the jar, I felt the smoothness of their skins and the firm curvature of their shape as they jostled against each other and against my hands. I saw the dull gleam of their black matte exteriors, and the ever-changing shadows between them. I heard the gentle rhythmic rain as they fell onto the glass and then onto each other. And for a moment, my shoulders relaxed and my mind quieted, and the simple beauty of the action filled the room with peace.

So, my goal for this week: to take more time to notice these moments of beauty that God has placed in even the most seemingly trivial aspects of our lives, and not just to notice them but to linger in them, to let their peace seep into my heart. It is true that these moments are purely of this life, completely temporal - but God created this world, and temporality, and He can use it to teach us about eternity and craft us in His image.

My little dream and what it taught me

I had a rather amusing dream last night. It was around Thanksgiving, I presume, because we were baking pies. These pies were glorious! There were three pumpkin pies and one pecan pie, and I was so proud of them and so excited to serve them the next day at Thanksgiving dinner. But there were guests staying at the house (or maybe just family - I'm not sure how it went exactly) and they started eating those pies right then! And by the time they were done there was only one pumpkin and half the pecan left, and I was so upset because they had ruined everything for the next day, and hadn't shown any restraint or self-control or consideration. So in my dream, my mom was trying to calm me down and say that everything was ok, and the tension built up inside me so much that I let out this awful scream. At least, in my dream I did (which is impressive in itself, because usually my dreams don't have any kind of sound at all). Hopefully I didn't actually scream in my sleep and wake Paul up :P

Anyway, I think the dream illustrates rather nicely my desire for all things in life to be beautiful and perfect and well-ordered, as well as my inability to cope when it all goes wrong! I've been doing all this meditating on grace, but maybe I need to start learning to give grace to others when they don't follow my rules of order for a given situation - to live by grace rather than by law in the little trivial things like my dream presented as well as in the big matters of identity and life purpose. It could make life a lot more enjoyable, because it would allow the focus to be on relationships rather than on successful completion of a task or maintenance of an appearance :)

Successes and failures and grace

I tend to see life in terms of successes and failures (to the point where it can be hard for me to understand how life can be seen in any other way). For example, if I haven't read my Bible for a week, let's say, I'll think of that as a failure in my walk with Christ, and then think of myself as a failure as a follower of Christ. Conversely, if I have been praying and reading and serving and witnessing, I think of each of those things as a success, and then maybe of myself as a success because I've accomplished those things (although I can almost always find some failure to focus on). It extends down to the most trivial things, too - if I have the house looking nice and dinner on the table when Paul comes home from work on Friday, I get so happy inside because my self-evaluation tells me that I am a "good wife", but if dinner is running late or something is off, I feel like a failure because my self-evaluation tells me that I am a "bad wife". Similarly, I'll feel like a failure for showing up late to an event, or for being unclear in a conversation, or for not doing my laundry over the weekend. Everything that happens becomes a tally mark in either the column of successes or the column of failures, and then I base my feelings of self-worth on which column seems to be winning.

But you know what? This way of looking at life and of judging myself is, at its heart and in its very essence, opposed to the concept of grace. And I'm a Christian, right? And that means that at the center of my faith is the belief that I am a hopeless sinner saved by the undeserved love of a great God - in other words, the doctrine of grace, right? So how have I allowed my primary mode of operation - my dominant means of perceiving and evaluating the world around me - to set itself up in the enemy camp? My paradigm for understanding life is a bit of a traitor, apparently... it has chosen the old ways of judgment and law over the new covenant of grace in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So what does it mean to live with a worldview of grace rather than one of judgment? 

Obviously I'm not too sure, since I don't do it very well! But I think it means that instead of trying to make myself perfect to earn God's love and approval, I choose instead to rely on Him to change me and rest in the assurance of the love and acceptance He has already given me and will never take away from me. That instead of trying to overcome every obstacle with the grit of my will and the strength of my mind, I admit my need and take refuge in the One who is my shield and strong tower. That instead of basing my self-worth on what I can do for God and others, I ground my identity in what God has done for me and in who God has declared me to be.

I'm thinking this is one of those things that is easier to say than to do, but most good things are, you know? And this time at least I can start off by admitting how hard it will be for me, and by asking God for His grace and strength to make it possible :)

Discouragement and grace

It is so easy for me to become discouraged when I sin, especially when I watch myself continue in a sinful attitude or course of action in the very moment of realizing its sinfulness. If I was a good Christian, I think - if I really loved and followed God - I wouldn't be thinking or feeling or acting this way. So the fact that I sin, and do so despite the inner promptings of the Spirit and my conscience, must mean that I'm not a very good Christian at all.

But what does it mean to be a "good Christian" in the first place? After all, a Christian is one who has acknowledged his own sinfulness and utter inability to love and obey God, and who has thrown himself unreservedly on the completely undeserved grace that God offers. Our whole faith centers around this key truth: that God has redeemed us out of His own great love and mercy, not because of our merit and righteousness. Our whole concept of self-identity is founded in this statement: that we are sinners saved by grace. If we are saved by grace, it is only rational to expect that we ought to continue in grace, right? So a truly "good Christian" would be one who lives in God's grace, not expecting to achieve perfection by his own efforts, and thus not descending to the depths of despair and discouragement every time those efforts fail. In other words, it is my response to my sin even more than the sin itself that is important to my faith and the continued growth of my relationship with God.

This was brought home to me (after an evening and morning of discouragement at my own feeble attempts to live righteously) by an article I happened to stumble upon over at Ligonier Ministries (I didn't even know they had articles on their website! I now have a new treasure trove to go through!). To quote briefly:

We must resist the temptation of thinking we can stand in our own strength. We must depend on the grace of the One who said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). If we fall, we must go to Christ, confessing our sin and hoping in His mercy. The Scriptures declare: “The righteous falls seven times and rises again” (Prov. 24:16). To fall seven times means that you have been restored six. The greatest believers are subject to great weaknesses.

It's brilliant, that line: "To fall seven times means that you have been restored six." We shouldn't expect to be able to walk without falling, because our own strength has always come up short. But we should strive to live by grace, to get up and press forward once more after each and every fall, knowing that our Lord is our strength. He will restore us and raise us up - will we try again to follow Him, or will we simmer in our self-disappointment and refuse to accept the grace He offers day by day?

Leaving the weekend behind

A brief update on my weekend: I tried to make granola bars for Paul, so he'd have a portable, filling, healthy snack; I failed rather miserably (although the granola that resulted isn't that bad, I guess). I intended to clean our apartment and straighten things up; I managed to vacuum the kitchen (which needed it most desperately) but that was about it. I wanted to make a patchwork valance for our kitchen window; I started, but probably won't finish until next weekend at the very earliest, so now I have all the random pieces of fabric sitting around making the place look even messier than it otherwise would (see previous point!) I planned to do my Bible study in preparation for our meeting Tuesday night, but forgot until 8:30 last night (and I didn't get very far because it's pretty intense). I hoped to make delicious meals for Paul to come home to after drill on Saturday and Sunday, but I really didn't do any cooking at all the whole weekend. I thought I had figured out how to run a Java applet for my homework assignment, but then found out that I got an awful grade because the grader couldn't get my applet to load. I desired to make our apartment a place of rest, peace, and beauty, but I felt so exhausted and discouraged that I wasn't even able to keep myself consistently happy and cheerful, and struggled to be loving and joyful. In addition, God convicted me about a few areas where I was putting Him into the limits of my understanding, and rejecting or ignoring things I didn't understand or didn't like, and while that is definitely a good thing in the long run, it isn't necessarily pleasant at the time, and it contributed to my feeling of discouragement even though I knew intellectually that God still loved me and wasn't angry with me (side thought - I am sometimes absolutely terrified that God is angry with me, so scared that I am afraid to even open up my Bible for fear of what I might read. I don't think this attitude really reflects the reality of who God is and what His relationship with me is now that I've been adopted into His family! But I still struggle with it.) Basically, in all the little and not-so-little tasks I set for myself, I fell short (in some cases, very far short) of the goal. Whether I was trying to cook or sew or pray or have a joyful heart, I just couldn't do it. So lucky me, I got to start the week feeling like a miserable, worthless failure. But as I was writing this post, not entirely intending to post it because it was devolving into a list of complaints, God reminded me of a very encouraging verse: "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:13-14 The challenge in those verses is rather obvious. The encouragement, at least to this rather negatively-inclined individual, is not quite so obvious! But it is this: that we are not bound forever to the failures and sins and mistakes of our past - that we can forget them and move on from them, that we can be free from that over-hanging burden of guilt and fear of condemnation, because God has already forgiven them and wants us to keep moving forward. Even when it is a sin that we are leaving behind, rather than just a failure to meet a human expectation, once we have repented, we don't need to linger in the guilt and the shame any longer. We are free to move forward, to keep pressing toward God, to continue seeking His face and striving to trust and obey Him by grace through faith. That freedom, that lifting of the burden of the past, is one of the most encouraging things ever! So weekend, I am leaving you behind, and choosing today to reach forward and press toward my goal of knowing and following Jesus Christ.

Pleasing or trusting

In rereading Truefaced (since I haven't yet returned it, and am delaying doing so as long as possible...), one of the ideas that jumped out at me was that the path of Pleasing God is not the best one to take. That contradicts pretty much everything about the way I live! I try so hard to do everything right, to make God and other people happy with who I am and the way I live, and now this book has the nerve to tell me that I'm going about it all wrong?

When I think about it honestly, though - when I set aside my fear and pride long enough to listen to what the book is saying, and take the time to look at my own life without becoming defensive - I am forced to admit that it is right. Ultimately, living to please God first and foremost leaves me empty, unfulfilled, feeling like my life is meaningless and like I am a complete failure, because as long as I strive to please God on my own, as long as I try to eliminate my sin by my own power to earn His approval, and as long as I attempt to win His acceptance by my earnest efforts to obey His commands, I will keep failing. It simply isn't possible to accomplish those tasks in myself, without His grace.

What is the alternative, then? According to Truefaced, the other path to choose is that of Trusting God. Trusting God with my imperfection and sin means trusting Him to love me and be delighted in me as His daughter despite those things in my life, and trusting Him to have a plan to cleanse and renew me of those things. That can be really hard sometimes, when I don't feel worthy of love and can't imagine how He can keep pouring it over me with grace, or when I feel trapped in the same struggles I've had for years and don't see how His hand is at work to sanctify me.In the end, though, it is worth it. Trusting Him brings peace and joy and contentment to life, and even better, it brings a deeper knowledge of and intimacy with God. When I'm trusting Him, I'm free to truly receive and experience His love and grace and power, and I'm free to respond authentically to it. What more could I desire?

The idea of significance in vocation

One of my strongest desires is to do something really significant for God with my life - to have a career that truly makes a difference in the world, to live a life that touches more people than just the few (mostly white) suburban Americans I interact with now, to leave a legacy of love and mission for God that people will remember. But then I look at myself, and at the skills and talents that I have, and the chances of ever fulfilling this desire seem rather small. I mean, I really don't have much talent at things like interacting with people or deepening and maintaining friendships or beginning relationships that could be more than just superficial. I'm not skilled at preaching or teaching (except for young children because they don't intimidate me quite as much). I will willingly give time and energy to make you food if you need it, or invite you over to my house if you need someone to talk to or a place to stay, or even visit you and try to serve you if you're sick and need some help, but I can't guarantee that I'll do any of that well! So a career that revolves around personal interactions, like a career in ministry or foreign missions, would be extremely hard for me and I don't think I'd be doing it very well. On top of that, I'd be ignoring a lot of the talents that God did give me.

When I look at the things that interest me and that I'm good at, however, I feel a bit dejected. I find so much pleasure in programming and science (especially biology); I can stay focused on and remember details and can enjoy even tedious work if I have to concentrate while I do it; I have a great memory; I am quite good at problem-solving; and so on. Academically, God has given me some talent - more there than just about anywhere else, anyway :P But the careers that hold the most appeal for me - research, molecular biology, bioinformatics, etc. - seem to be so lacking in the significance factor. What kind of eternal impact can I be making if my job involves sitting at a computer analyzing data and modeling proteins? If this is the vocation God's designed me for, why is it so inferior to those other ones that I desire, that make a visible difference in the world and for eternity?

Today I found a very thought-provoking article about the concepts of vocation and radical Christianity. Does being a radical Christian - being sold out for God and seeking to follow Him wholeheartedly - mean that we have to be in some sort of missions, ministry, or service-oriented career? Maybe different vocations, regardless of how significant they seem, are all on the same level because they are all established and called by God. Or maybe what matters isn't finding the most important vocation and getting into it, but finding the vocation to which God has called you, and pursuing that. Hmm, more for me to think about, and definitely more encouraging thoughts this time :)

Grilled cheese sandwiches and the grace of God

Shortly after we were married (so a little over a week ago :P), my husband (it's still weird saying that) and I were talking about how I'm a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to myself. I deeply desire to be perfect - to accomplish every task I set for myself to the standards I set, without wasting time or effort. If I don't meet those expectations I have for myself, I can feel really bad. Like, crying uncontrollably because I slightly overcooked the grilled cheese kind of bad (it's kind of extreme...). For me, relationships fall under the umbrella of "tasks I must carry out perfectly" as well, so I'm always afraid that I've said the wrong thing or not shown enough care or not paid enough attention, and I can emotionally break down pretty easily here too.

Anyway, Paul said something about this whole situation that I thought was pretty wise, which was that even if I managed to be perfect according to my definition of perfect, I might not be doing what God wanted, because His definition of perfect might be different than mine, and His desire for my life and heart and attitude and achievements might also be different than mine. This has made me think a lot about my perfectionism. I used to tell myself that it was just fine to be so perfectionist because it just affected me - I didn't try to hold anyone else to my standards or make them feel bad or judged or anything, I just wanted to be the best I could be. But I think I took it farther than I should have, to the point where I valued meeting my own standards of perfection more than seeking God on His terms. In a way I was acting like I could make myself perfect without His grace, which will never happen. And because it can never happen, and I can tell it isn't happening, I can get really depressed, or defensive, or angry, or hopeless, depending on the moment.

I think God wants me to trust Him and receive grace from Him to get me through life, instead of trusting myself and trying to make myself perfect to win His approval and the approval of other people. That is just so hard when I want so desperately not to fail at anything, and to be able to feel like I have earned the love of other people and of God. But I could never earn His love. No one can. And what's more, He has already completely approved and accepted us through Jesus Christ, and declared us to be righteous in Him. The kind of perfection I'm striving after is nothing compared to that righteousness He's given me! So I'm not saying I'm going to change overnight here, but this is definitely something I want to keep in mind, to try to set my focus straight on seeking God even though that means I have to accept His grace instead of doing everything myself. And you know what? Maybe then I won't be so upset about the little things (like burnt grilled cheese) and I'll have more energy and enthusiasm for the things in life that really matter :)