Balance

We talked today about how to achieve "balance" in life. This is clearly a big issue for many of us, so I think it's worth a few sentences on what that means. What is a balanced life, is it something worth striving for, and how do I know if I've got one?

One thing balance might mean is figuring out how to get everything done without getting stressed out over it. Our world puts a lot of demands on us. Phone, email, work, kids, TV, house, spouse, cars, career, the economy, world peace, the environment... the things on our to-do list seems endless. And on top of all this, I go to church and find out I'm supposed to study the Bible and pray without ceasing! So, there's lot competing for our time and lots of stress over not getting it all done.

Maybe balance means a literal balancing of time and activities. Equal time for the various slices of my life. It makes sense that the more important things ought to get more time that the less important, so some kind of a prioritizing scheme seems to be needed. For example, people talk about wanting to spend more time with their families and less time at work. Nobody seems to suggest spending ALL their time at anything.

Balance might simply mean figuring out exactly what to do from this great list of expectations. It might mean picking the "best" of all the things I might do. But isn't this just another thing to do? Now I need to find the best thing to do before I can do anything. No stress there! There's some truth to this in that I clearly don't want to neglect important responsibilities to do meaningless things (well, actually, I do that pretty regularly!).

When we talk about balance in our lives, I think we mean it in this prioritizing-of-activities way. Some things are more important, and we want to be doing the important things in life... but does this lead to a balanced life? I suspect it does not.

How about Paul, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther, Moses, Abraham, Job, or Jesus? Were any of their lives balanced? I've been trying to thing of people worthy of admiration, real role models, who lived balanced lives and I'm not coming up with anybody. Great people seem to be pretty focused, single-minded and unbalanced about life. They throw themselves into one big thing completely.

What is it God wants of us? Balance? That's not a word I would choose to sum up our calling as Christians. God doesn't want part of us, he wants all of us. He doesn't want to be our top priority. He wants to be our ONLY priority. That's about as far from balance as you can get! God doesn't want me to have a balanced life, far from it.

We all know this, so why do I still feel uncomfortable when I spend too much time at work, not enough time with the kids, and minimal time in Bible study? Why do I try to get my life in balance? Maybe it's because I'm still trying to have it all. I want what I want, and I also want a relationship with God. I want everything, so I strive to get it all in balance somehow. I wonder if that's even possible.

In John 17:13-18, Jesus says that we are "in the world" but not "of the world." He says that he doesn't want to take us out of the world even though the world hates us because he has sent us into the world. I'm here on a mission from God... The Blues Bothers had it right all along! I'm not here to live a balanced life where I get a nice family, a good job, an early retirement, and everything I deserve. Maybe I should be trying to figure out what my mission is, not the go-into-all-the-world-and-make-disciples mission, but MY mission. Read the first few paragraphs of The Purpose Driven Life:

"It's not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions."

Maybe my feeling of being out of balance comes from too much "of" and not enough "in." That's what's really out of balance.

Rewards in Heaven

I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. -- Luke 16:9 (NIV)

The parable of the dishonest manager (Luke 16:1-13) has got to be the most puzzling parable in the Bible. Jesus seems to be telling us that we ought to use any worldly riches we get to curry favor with those who can welcome us in heaven. In short, we ought to help others so they will have a good word to say about us later.

Parables are clearly intended to be more than puzzling little stories. Matthew Henry says it well, "...the divine revelation of both these in the gospel is intended to engage and quicken us to the practice of Christian duties..." We are supposed to learn something about how to live our lives properly.

The manager was about to be fired for failing to carry out his duties properly. Jesus commends him for taking the resources he had temporary control over (his master's) and applying them to his own benefit. To make it worse, he says that his followers are not this shrewd and implies they need to be more clever!

I have long been reluctant to even accept the idea of heavenly "rewards" that were contingent on earthly performance. It seems to cheapen the gospel to think that I would do good here on earth in order to get something for myself. Where is the selflessness of the gospel in this idea? However, the notion of heavenly rewards is clearly taught in the Bible.

Maybe the best I can do at this point is to understand that there's more to proper living than salvation. We tend to behave as if the only thing that really matters is accepting Jesus as Savior. It seems there is more to it than that. How we live our lives here on earth will have an impact on how we will live in heaven. More study is in order on this one!

If A Little is Good, Is More Better?

Here's another economics book for you... Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben. Now, I haven't actually read the book, but I did read all the reviews on Amazon so I can speak with authority about its contents. :-)

McKibbin argues that as a society, the West is over-consuming resources and endangering the planet as a result. To me this sounds a bit like The Limits To Growth published in the early 1970s by The Club of Rome. It made somewhat similar arguments about the coming demise of the planet due to unbridled growth. Most of those predictions have not come to pass because they did not consider the advance of technology and our increasing ability to produce. McKibbon makes a more subtle argument, but perhaps falls victim to a similar extrapolation error.

The really interesting thing that he seems to be saying is that "more" is no longer making us happy, and that perhaps there's a better way. On his web page, McKibben makes the assertion, "For the first time in human history, 'more' is no longer synonymous with 'better'—indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites."

This then is the riddle. Most of us would agree that the unrestrained pursuit of material riches is not good and will not ultimately make us happy. Yet as a society we seem to be doing it anyway. According to an article in Slate, "the country now possesses some 1.875 billion square feet of personal storage." This has grown by 75% in the last 10 years, and these facilities boast a 90% occupancy rate. On top of this, in the last 20 years the size of the average American home has increased by about 700 sq ft. We have bigger homes and still feel the need to lease additional storage space for our "stuff."

You you see anything wrong with this picture?

And, by the way... do YOU have a storage locker?