The Intentional Life
By Charles Rush
March 16, 2014
Galatians 5: 1, 22, 23, 1 Timothy 1: 7
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For Freedom Christ set us free. Do not submit yourself
again to the yoke of slavery. For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace,
patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. God did
not give us a spirit of timidity but one of love, power, and self-control.
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is week, I was reading articles about violence in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Egypt, Afghanistan, Crimea, Libya, Venezuela, Turkey, Yemen, Somalia, Mali… So many places where there is outright civil war or protracted social anarchy because these regions actually possess very little civil society. It brought to mind Edmund Burke, writing at the beginning of the French Revolution, on the excess revenge violence that swept across that country. Said Burke, “Men (and women) are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.” This will shortly be the challenge of our neighbors near and far as more and more of us simply must live in freedom, even though they are poorly prepared for it.
The bible
teaches us that God created us for freedom as spiritual beings. St. Paul taught
us that the meaning of Christ's death is that we would find our freedom and
live out of it. When God is present in our lives and we are full of God's
Spirit we live in joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and
self-control. The Spirit of God fills us with love, power, and self-control.
You may be
interested to know that in the Roman Empire, the opposite of self-control is
demonic possession. Romans believed that you could put a hex on your enemies
and they spent quite a bit of time putting the curses on one another. And when
you were cursed you were under the power of a demon. Daimonia
actually means ‘to be controlled by another'.
So when you read
the gospels, you may notice that in the Gospel of Mark, which was written to
Romans by a Roman, some of the stories about Jesus healing people are told a
little differently, so that Jesus casts out demons. That is what Romans would
expect that Jesus would free us from demons because those were their religious
beliefs before Christianity.
Today we think
about these things quite differently, but the issue of freedom and self-control
is perhaps bigger than it was when Jesus was alive. And we know very well what
the difference between driving and being driven, being in control or out of
control, particularly those of us who have struggled with addictions to alcohol
and drugs. You know when these things take you over, a fine line to describe,
but you know when your life feels like it is being driven by your habits.
This will surely
grow as a challenge for all of us since our marketers are getting so much
better at creating cravings in all of us to eat more than we thought we needed
and they are getting much more clever at predicting what we will likely buy
based on what we've previously bought. “People who liked this book, also
bought…” We are going to have to be much more intentional about the way that we
live and not simply go with the flow.
One study at
Duke University suggested that up to 40% of our daily activity is actually
controlled by habitual actions. 40% of the day. Wake up, go to the bathroom,
put toothpaste on brush, brush teeth, turn on shower, test
water temperature… Even quite a range of rather complex
functions like starting the car and backing out of the driveway- all on
autopilot.
Here is the
thing about our habitual life. It is more critical than we realize to our
higher functioning. We've done a number of studies, for example, that correlate
our habits to indirect outcomes. We know that families that regularly eat
dinner together also regularly have children with more pronounced emotional
control, better confidence in themselves, with better ability to do their
homework and they make better grades. It is not like one habit causes the other
outcomes but they strongly correlate.
Likewise, making
your bed every morning correlates strongly with productivity, sticking to a
budget and a feeling of well-being.
My favorite is
that attending church correlates strongly with better marriages and a better
sex life. Please get the word out. I don't know what we are doing, but it is
helpful.
We aren't quite
sure why good habits in one area correlate with positive outcomes in other
areas but it suggests that better understanding of our habits should be crucial
and paying more attention to developing good habits is more important that we
knew.
This is what
Christians have been doing during Lent for 2000 years, breaking bad habits and
replacing them with better habits. God gave us the Church that we might be an
inspiration for each other, a support as we try to find our place and bring out
the best in each of us that we might become. What a powerful thing that can be.
Perhaps you read
about the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, who won so many medals swimming for
the United States. I was interested to learn that his mother actually
encouraged him to swim when he was young as a way for him to get rid of some of
his excess energy. His swim coach actually knew him as a child and could see
greatness in him.
But the
greatness was complicated by the fact that Michael was full of a lot of nervous
energy, like so many young boys. And he had some background stresses in his
life that he wasn't very good at dealing with, like his parents divorcing. His
coach convinced his mother to walk Michael through a series of meditation
exercises at night, a routine to get him to shed some of this stress and help
him to focus mentally. That dealt with the negative piece.
And the positive
piece? His coach got him to envision a perfect race. He got him to envision
getting off the blocks, hitting the water, seeing each stroke on the first lap,
the turn off the wall, each and every detail. Every day he got Michael to see
the perfect race. Every night he got him to play the tape of the perfect race
before he went to bed. And just before his races, his coach got him to go
through a routine, putting on his suit, what he would eat, putting on his
headphones with loud energizing music just when he was at the pool waiting for
the race to begin, envisioning the perfect race over
and over in his mind. And then boom, it was race time.
What a powerful
thing that focus turned out to be. It allowed Michael Phelps to break through
and break records and realize his potential. [i]
On our best days, that is what we do for each other in the Church, we are an
inspiration for each other, a focus so that our nobler side rises rather than
our slothful side, each of us realizing our deeper potential. We come together,
building in good habits in our life, habits of prayer, habits of worship and
gratitude that we are here, even with all of our problems, habits of hearing a
noble thought for the week that reminds of what is important in our life and
encourages us to think about where we are headed, habits of singing together in
adoration, sometimes in great sadness, accessing a deeper emotional part of our
being that words alone can't quite plumb.
In Lent, we may
focus on breaking a simple bad habit to strengthen our character and will
remembering that God wants us to embody our higher self. And we surround
ourselves with good friends who can encourage us to embody our higher selves.
St. Paul taught us that this is what God intended for the church, for us to
lift one another up in prayer, sharing our lives, a communion of healing that
would amplify the love we have known and transcend the limitations deficits
they have inflicted. We help give each other a vision.
There is a
wonderful segment in the movie Field of
Dreams where Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones go looking for Archie
Graham. Archie Graham was a real life minor league baseball player for
Charlotte in the old North Carolina baseball league. He got called up to the
New York Gians on June 29th, 1905. He got
to play one inning as an outfielder but he never actually got to bat in the
major leagues.
Archie Graham
lived out the res of his lie
as a doctor in a small town in the Midwest. In the world of sports writers, his
life is considered a tragey of sorts- to get all the
way to Ebbets field and not be able to bat. So Kevin
Costner and James Earl Jones expect to find a guy that is wistful, perhaps
bitter. They finally locate him and he is elderly without much longer to live.
They ask him,
looking back on his life, ‘wasn't it a tragedy that you only got to play the
game for 5 minutes?' He smiles remember the day when he was twenty, reflecting
back on the sixty something years that he lived after that and he says, “Son,
if I'd only gotten to e a doctor for 5 minutes, now that would have been a tragedy.”
Like all kids,
he had the hopes and dreams of hitting it big, but at some point it started to
dawn on him what his actual ‘vocation' was, that word literally means ‘his
calling'- not just his job, but a sense of calling. Baseball was a love, but he
was starting to see what he was becoming, the shape of what he should be about
in his one odd and beautiful life. Looking back, he could say that he was meant
to become a doctor, a husband, a grandfather, a community leader in a small
town. The outlines of becoming started taking shape.
On our better
days, that is what we do for each other, help each other to let the calling of
our lives start to take shape.
What is it that
is impeding you from excellence in your calling to become who you are meant to
become? What is it that you need to grow? Patience? Anger? Reconciliation?
Confidence? Daring?
We are told that
Jesus retreated to the wilderness for 40 days of fasting and prayer. Scripture
writes the story as though Jesus had a sense of what he needed to do and in the
40 days he honed the spiritual fitness that it would take to fulfill a
difficult calling.
I don't think
you needed to be the Son of God to know that Roman authorities were capable of torturing
you unto death. No more than Dr. King had a pretty good idea that he might just
get shot to death standing for Civil Rights. And I suspect that you don't need
penetrating psychological insight to identify what is keeping you from
realizing your potential.
What can you do
to bring that one thing to mind, front and center, for the next few weeks
leading up to Easter? What can you devise that will help you strengthen your
character?
And may you reap
the blessing of developing spiritual discipline in one place. And may your
family become richer for it. And may all of us grow deeper as a community
because of you. Carpe Diem. Amen.