Maturity

Demolishing the Culture of Busyness

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I didn’t want to put out two “Dire Dan” posts in a row, but besides the problems we have with taking care of the least of these, we have a serious problem with busyness. Yep, speed kills...and now we have the proof!Any long-time reader knows that I feel busyness damages the soul and makes us less aware of the the Lord’s leading. And it’s a growing problem.

Now my suspicion is no longer conjecture.

Dr. Michael Zigarelli, associate professor of Management at the Charleston Southern University School of Business, conducted a study over five years that shows that Christians are succumbing to the tyranny of the urgent.

I’ll wait here while you read the article.

Read it? Great!

In light of yesterday’s post, how can we possibly meet the needs of others if we’re always focused on our own lives as we rush hither and yon? Well, we can’t. Sort of puts a crimp in those Kingdom of God plans, doesn’t it.

Who succumbs to the rush?

And professionals whose busyness interferes with developing their relationship with God include lawyers (72 percent), managers (67 percent), nurses (66 percent), pastors (65 percent), teachers (64 percent), salespeople (61 percent), business owners (61 percent), and housewives (57 percent).

Let’s break that list down to root issues that create busyness.

Lawyers, managers, salespeople, and business owners

  • Distorted work lives (caused by industrialism).
  • The pursuit of money.

Nurses, teachers, housewives, and pastors

  • Bearing the load of caring for others in a relationally-disconnected society created by distorted work lives and the pursuit of money.

The root causes listed are familiar to readers of this blog. Many posts here cover these root issues. Sadly, those tenacious roots grow deeper every year, but we hear little about them in our churches.

It’s not enough to say that we must focus more on God. That’s just adding another task to the problem. Instead, we Christians must start questioning the underlying root issues that cause this busyness.

While the study does not explain why Christians are so busy and distracted, Zigarelli described the problem among Christians as “a vicious cycle” prompted by cultural conformity.

“[I]t may be the case that (1) Christians are assimilating to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload, which leads to (2) God becoming more marginalized in Christians’ lives, which leads to (3) a deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to (4) Christians becoming even more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about how to live, which leads to (5) more conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload. And then the cycle begins again.”

I agree with Dr. Zigarelli’s analysis. First, we are caught in a vicious cycle of busyness. Second, the implied cure is to no longer conform to the culture.

What must that non-conformity look like?

I suggest that we Christians must

  • Revitalize and rebuild local economies that counter globalism’s trend toward marginalization of communities and individuals
  • Discover alternative work lives that keep families (and communities) together during the day
  • Pursue simplicity by rejecting consumerism
  • Create alternative Christian communities that better conform to the Gospel’s standard of benevolence and more effectively shoulder the burden of caring for others
  • Reform our doctrinal emphases from head knowledge to the practical outworkings of the Faith
  • Stand by and encourage those who reject conformity to the prevailing culture rather than marginalizing them
  • Craft a new vision for living lives devoted to God first and to each other second.

Folks, these root issues penetrate deeply into the Western psyche. Busyness simply reflects the root. As Jesus notes of some demonic powers, only prayer and fasting will drive them out. And I believe some element of the demonic weaves through these roots.

None of this will be easy. It means revisioning all aspects of how we live our lives. Too many of us think how we live now is the only way it can be. But that’s a lie. We’ve got to stop believing that lie and start believing that God can change things if we repent and start asking hard questions that demand even harsher answers.

See these posts for more:

How Does Your Garden Grow?

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lemonboyjpg.jpgWe’ve been eating meals of late made from what we’ve grown ourselves here at Edelen Acres. I’m especially diggin’ the fresh herbs. Made salsa out of the wide variety of tomatoes we’re growing (man, those Lemon Boys are superb!) and tossed in our own cilantro. Scrumptious!

Anyone who reads here long enough knows I support the neo-agrarian lifestyle. I think it best fits God’s original intent for us in the Garden. Local economies. Permaculture. Peace. Tim Keller may love the city and use Jonah as his anti-agrarian homeboy, but Jonah went back home at some point—and home wasn’t the bustling metropolis of Nineveh. For me, the city’s okay. But just okay.

And I’m going off topic…

Eating our own salsa this evening got me thinking about the joys of fruitfulness. To watch the fruit grow and then be put to good use, that’s meaningful. It carries in it the seed of God purpose for us all.

But I wonder how fruitful we are. Finding fruit in America feels nigh unto impossible as we’re so distracted by LIFE™ to give any care to spiritual fecundity. If we’re not making disciples, though, then just what are we doing?

When we talk about knowing God, we fall back into the usual talk of reading the Bible more, or praying more, but we never, ever talk about living out our fruitfulness more. It’s as if we’ve divorced God from His working through us.

But I think that the best way to know God is to do what He says. He honors those who obey Him by revealing more of Himself. And it’s the kind of revelation you can’t get except through obedience to His calling.

Why does doing the Lord’s work get such short shrift when we talk about pressing on to know God? I think I’ve learned more about the depths of the Lord’s heart from doing what He tells me to do (feed the hungry, communicate the Gospel to the lost, love my brother, etc.) than nearly any other source.

And that’s an offshoot of fruitfulness, isn’t it? We will be known by our fruits and we will know Him more deeply because we are fruitful. He’ll continue to expand our gardens, and we’ll find more of Him as those gardens grow.

So how does your garden grow?

Sinners or Saints?

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Driving home this evening, I got to thinking about what I’ve written here the last few days. Much of it centers around how we Christians perceive ourselves and what Christ has done for us. Saints of the Most High God!It’s the question of whether we see ourselves as sinners or saints.

The more I read the Scriptures, the more I realize we’re misunderstanding the extent of Christ’s work on the cross. And in that misunderstanding, we fall back into a grossly mistaken position.

The New Testament draws clear lines of distinction between sinners and saints. We, however, like to blur those distinctions whenever we call our post-conversion selves “sinners.” But I don’t see Paul going back to that well all the time. When he writes a letter to a church, he doesn’t say, “To all the sinners in the church of….” No, he repeatedly uses the word saints.

In truth, you and I are saints who are being changed by God through the putting off of our old sin nature. Our identities got swapped out. God doesn’t look at us as sinners, but saints because of the salvation purchased for us by Christ.

So why is it that so many of us go back to that hangdog “sinner” appellation? Aren’t we giving up what Christ did for us at the cross? If we truly are new creations in Christ, if He’s paid the penalty on our behalf, and He’s secured for us access to the Father, why do we fall back into thinking of ourselves as sinners and not saints?

If anything, the epistles drive this home:

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
—Romans 6:11

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
—Galatians 2:20

So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
—Galatians 4:7

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…
—Ephesians 2:19

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
—1 John 3:1a

If we don’t have this mentality, then we’re missing out on what it means to be alive in Christ.

We then

  • set our expectations low and don’t believe God for the impossible because we still think we’re aliens and strangers,
  • fail to appropriate what Christ has purchased for us on the cross, because we mistakenly think the sinner in us is triumphant over the saint, and
  • muddle through and lament, rather than walk in our inheritance as children of God.

I’ve got to believe that our failure to move beyond identifying primarily as sinners is one reason why our churches lack power. It explains why so much of what we attempt for the Kingdom fails. It shows why so many of us limp through our days rather than rising on wings like eagles.

Church, it’s time to step out of the sinner ghetto and walk in the sainthood Christ so dearly paid for!