Sacrificing Joy
I agree.
But here is my dilemma: My life is filled with responsibilities and deadlines. I go to school, pastor a church, assist my seminary in their admissions process, and feel obligated to be a good friend.
My school takes up twelve hours a week plus roughly twenty hours of study. I work at least 10 hours on my sermon and spend two days a week with my congregation. Fifteen hours of my week is given to the McAfee Admissions Office and every Saturday I play softball with some friends. With this schedule I am up to 57 hours of responsibility time plus two days are given to my congregants.
Why do I do this you ask? Because I can. Because God is blessing me in it. Because it gives me a sense of fulfillment. All of these shape an identity for me. And I love every second of it.
We are all busy people. We all know what it is like to work the extra hour or sign up for one my volunteer role. We all overextend ourselves. My hunch is we are receiving recognition and praise from our designated time-fillers. I know this is why I am so busy. If one of my obligations were giving me negative attention and were sucking me dry – I would stop doing it. But as long as people are recognizing me and benefiting from my work, I will sacrifice my time, energy and joy to do the job.
All people at some degree want to excel and to be recognized. We all want to feel important, needed, valuable, accepted, and want to affect change for the better. It’s human nature to want to feel relevant.
But I agree - I take myself too seriously.
My Pastoral Care class has taught me there are certain myths we adhere to in our lives that need to be re-authored. For me, I have a ministry myth that sacrifices joy. This myth says that I must do the work I am responsible to do before I ever have time to play. It also says my narcissism responds well to praise and success. Since work equals success and inevitably propels me closer to advancement, raises, promotions, and acclamation – I will choose to sacrifice joy for success.
I guess what I am learning or am poised to learn is success is not measured by money or with a ladder, but rather by joy. Joy is finding satisfaction in God through living life. If I do not stop to reflect on the moments of life but am consumed with meeting my next deadline then my success is for naught. Life will pass by. Joy will be missed.
Erwin McManus says God created us for the Garden of Eden. Eden means pleasure or delight. God created us to be pleased and delighted in living. God created us to play.
I think I agree with this. It is time for me to start living a life that incorporates moments of play. It’s time to set aside time to be. It’s past time for me to stop taking myself and my roles so seriously and start participating in the joyfulness that life offers. It’s time for me to re-author my myth of sacrificing joy and start living with a purposeful attempt to fill my soul with moments of delight.
It’s time to drop my mask of task-oriented success and start embracing the fundamental truth that life is meant to be lived – not conquered.
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Comments
The danger in such thinking is that the delight we focus on is our life. Such thinking then becomes self-centered because we are by nature sinful and sinners. Our highest delight should be in God our creator from which we will gain our greatest joy. Be careful of Erwin's statements, they seem good, but they are filled with half-truths they have eternal consequences.
Great insight and I love your hermeneutic of suspicion here. You are obviously aware of the battle of semantics we face as theologians.
I struggled with the same thought you are having but decided to go with it because of my belief that God's biggest hope for us is to become fully human. The Garden scene is purely devotional here and offers a unique perspective about how maybe we should settle down and learn to "be" more in the world. Wouldn't that make us less selfish?
Your insight is well taken and valued! Thanks for the reminder that you never stop growing and becoming. We can always use a reminder to be less selfish. God Bless!
I feel like our culture is saturated with this busyness. Everyone is always running of to the next thing, eating food on the go, and never resting. All the things you are doing are so great, but don't forget to rest either. I believe God commands a Sabbath for all of us. One day (not necessarily Sunday)that you're not working, but enjoying God and those around you. I think its more than that though too. Finding a way to work the heart of Sabbath into your everyday. I've heard Mark Driscoll and Darrin Patrick preach some good stuff on Sabbath. Just a thought.