purpose

i think the single most talked about topic within my circle of friends (not counting sex) is the question of what to do with the rest of our lives. i've pondered some options and will, of course, present them in list form.

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1) get married, get a salaried job(hopefully one you enjoy), work on buying a house, have kids, become member of local church, attend conferences and serve in various ministries, pick up a couple interesting hobbies.

when i look at the majority of christians, that's what they do. for non-christians, you can just subtract the church stuff and it's the same. it's not necessarily bad to conduct the rest of your life this way (if it was, i suppose less people would do it) but i think it can easily become a rut for some people. type employment is key here, because the job needs to be something you actually enjoy doing in order for this to be a viable option. i would say my parents are living this life for the most part, and they both enjoy what they do to an extent.

this is definitely the route the world pressures people to take, and on some level, the church also applies that pressure. stable families with steady incomes and free time on the weekends is great for the church - they get nice tithe checks and people to staff their various programs. 90% of your congregation or non-christian population sample is going to fall in this category, with some having enjoyable employment and good family situations and some not.

2) attempt to do something tough that you really care about, despite the road being difficult. i think a lot of artists struggle with this - art doesn't always pay the bills. to get paid one usually has to offer some kind of artistic compromise to appeal to a broader audience, which undermines the ethos behind one's art. being a musician, for instance, requires being financially unstable to a large degree, and also mandates a lot of travel and odd hours. it makes option no. 1 all but impossible, and the world doesn't exactly make the path easy. it's the road less traveled.

i suppose artists aren't the only ones that struggle with this in a world that doesn't appreciate or reward their effort, but art is the closest thing to me that fits this category. mike kinsella (owen) has a song called "one of these days" that goes and one of these days / i'll get a real job / one that actually pays / like my dad had / one of these days i'll give up / and give in to the man. i think that sums up the dilemma inherent in working for ourselves and doing things we love, especially as artists. it's tough and the temptation is always there to give up.

3) go into either full mother teresa mode, or start "bobbert t. hoohoojiggly international ministries" and write more books about the anointing and the holy spirit that nobody reads. you'll forgive me if i'm a bit sarcastic about this one, but i think modern charismatic christians hold up organizational ministry as the holy grail which we should all attain to. somehow bill hybels and brian houston are on another plane, another level, than us "common folk" and if some of us work hard enough we can be like them, maybe one day!

if i hear one more sod talk about seeing a hundred thousand people in a stadium when they can't even preach a sermon with any academically or theologically sound ideas in it for twenty minutes, i'm going to scream. i'm over organized ministry for the most part - a lot of it seems spiritually masturbatory to me. i get so much more out of a good conversation over a beer with a couple deep-thinking friends it's not even funny.

maybe the anglicans and catholics have it right - you have an hour of ritual every sunday, something that allows you to transcend church and get in contact with the divine. c.s. lewis, in letters to malcolm, said (and i loosely paraphrase) that worship should be habitual in the sense that we don't have to think about it - we can communicate with God directly through it because it's so comfortable and well-worn. that's the point of the Lord's prayer, isn't it? we suffuse the words with our meaning precisely because we know them so well. shouldn't edification within a church setting be somewhat the same? not that worship should be dreary and bland, because we don't serve that kind of God. but i think we need less time in the church and more time out of it.

nevertheless, full-time ministry is an option for a lot of christians, even if the market is glutted and there doesn't seem to be a real spiritual need for it. helping the poor and needy is a much more honorable way to go about it, and for many can be a real calling. but a lot of christians would rather get thousands of people in a meeting under their own banner than go and teach water sterilization techniques to villagers in india. the latter is more needed and (in my opinion) a more valid way of doing full time organized ministry.

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so what do we do with our lives, then? a lot of people say "follow your calling" but most days i'm not even sure what my calling is. i think maybe the answer is to just pick something you love, and do it no matter what. have good friends and good food and good beer, pray a lot, read some quality literature, and do the things with which you have been tasked. maybe stop listening to everybody else, including me. hah.