What God Wants For Your Life

Today’s Wall Street Journal announced a new disorder — the selective eating disorder. Meaning that people who grew up on chicken fingers and French fries might not be able to eat anything but chicken fingers and French fries.

Not able or not willing?

In the on-going “therapeutization” of human behavior, there are times when it is difficult to believe that anything remains our spiritual and moral responsibility. We are what we are. It’s unavoidable. And if someone ties those behaviors to some overt risk — to ourselves or to others, then it’s a disorder, it’s not a matter of choice.

I believe in therapy. I think it can make a difference. And almost everyone at some point in their lives could benefit from it. And there are real disorders.

But to label everything a disorder robs us of the responsibility to make healthy, moral, life-giving decisions. “Robs us?” Yes, “robs us.”

Robs us of the opportunity to take charge of our lives. Robs us of the opportunity to change, to grow, to improve, to live into all that God intends for us.
Robs us of our independence.
Robs us of a sense of initiative.

Making everything a disorder also turns us into dependents waiting for permission or pills to live the lives that are already possible — if we are willing (not able) to choose.

Shirley S. Wang, “Picky Eating Knows No Age Limit,” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, July 6, 2010): D1-2.

One of my students posted a badge on her Facebook account not long ago that read…”Nerds? We prefer the term ‘Intellectual Badass.’”

I like that.

But it also illustrates the problem with labels.

Labels almost never describe everything that someone thinks. By definition they give the one labeled no opportunity to explain, nuance, or defend what they believe. The labels themselves slip and slide in meaning, changing connotation. And the connotation that matters is almost always the one used by the one doing the labeling.

“Conservative,” for example, once meant “conserving” of the best of tradition. Now, more often than not, it refers to a body of beliefs (though, predictably, that body of beliefs varies widely.)

“Liberal,” once meant, open to ideas. Now it describes someone who doesn’t believe what a conservative believes (and that is hardly a matter of being open).

It is not surprising, then, that when labels are used conversation ends. If I label you, then I no longer need to make the effort to understand you — your fears, concerns, or passions. I have decided whether you are right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, in or out.

That is not to say that you shouldn’t form or hold critical opinions, but labeling doesn’t make for critical conversations. It forecloses on them.

What is the spiritual issue at stake? We are called to love God and love one another. You can’t love a label.

George Weigel observes:

“the deepest currents of history are spiritual and cultural, rather than political and economic…history is not simply the by-product of the contest for power in the world — although power plays an important role…And history is certainly not the exhaust fumes produced by the means of production, as the Marxists taught. Rather, history is driven, over the long haul, by culture — sby what men and women honor, cherish, worship; by what societies deem to be true and good and noble; by the expressions they give to those convictions in language, literature, and the arts; by what individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on.”

In other words, regardless of how you understand it or express it — whether you even acknowledge it or not — our national fortunes depend upon the spiritual choices we make. Staying alive to those choices and making them with courage are the measure of a nation’s place in history.

Happy Fourth…

George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral, Europe, America, and Politics without God (New York: Basic Books, 2005): 30.

The workplace also crystallizes the challenge of wealth. In seeking to deal with wealth in ways that have spiritual integrity, it is important to acknowledge certain realities:

We all possess wealth.

Wealth is relative. There is no absolute dollar figure that measures who is wealthy and who is not.

Wealth takes many forms. It is not just about bank accounts. It is about relationships, education, and social location.

It is distributed unevenly by forces beyond our control, including geography, nationality, neighborhood, family of origin, education, opportunity, and random chance.

No matter how little you have, you are likely to have more than someone else.

The spiritual challenge of wealth is about whether you have wealth or not, nor is it about whether you will use your wealth in ways that are life-giving.

It is a question of how you use it.

As with every other gift at our disposal, power is best used when it draws us closer to God and others.

When using power, the beginning of spiritual wisdom begins with these affirmations:

We all have power of one kind or another.

Power is a function of relationships, experience, education, and a variety of other factors beyond our control.

Most of those factors are constantly in flux and so is the nature of the power we possess.

The question is not whether we use power or not.

It is a question of how we use it and the goals we seek to achieve.

As with every other gift at our disposal, power is best used when it draws us closer to God and others.

Another reality we are forced to confront when we ask what it means to be spiritual is the struggle with power.

That spiritual struggle is not — as some suppose — a struggle between those who foreswear power and those who abuse it. Such easy distinctions are made by people in deep denial about their own lives, never mind social realities.

Power takes many forms and is unavoidable. It is a function of social status, family roles, the classroom, boardroom, and garage. It is the traveling companion of money, social status, education, licensing, union membership, executive responsibility, age, experience, and seniority. From managers to mothers, tenured faculty to preschool teachers, older siblings to senior legislators power is a factor.

If someone denies that power exists or suggests that there is a system by which it can be eliminated, they are not being spiritual. They are being naïve. And they open themselves up to countless errors in judgment with moral and spiritual consequences for themselves and others.

The denial that keeps us from finding direction for our lives takes a number of different forms.

And almost all of us are stuck from time to time in one way or another.

This list is not exhaustive. It is offered to help you think about how you might be stuck:

Co-dependence: The non-stop “I can’t move unless you move, I can’t find healing unless you find healing” that keeps us from facing our own challenges.

Laziness: I’m not worthy. It won’t matter. Meaning, I don’t want to work that hard.

Fear: I can’t do it. There are too many challenges. Meaning I’m afraid to try and I am really, really afraid to fail.

Anger: The fury that is focused on the others who are to blame that absolves me from deciding what to do next.

Pain and depression: The hopelessness that deepens because I just won’t make a move.

Misplaced loyalty: I would act, but I need to wait for permission. Meaning I would rather give someone else power over my life (who likely has little or no real investment in it), than run the risk of making the decisions myself.

There are other forms of denial of course — and endless permutations.

But at a deeper level denial points to potential areas of growth, because it almost always points to a place where we need to learn how to trust God.