John Steinbeck, winner of the Nobel Prize, decided to travel around the country he loved in order to explore and enjoy it more deeply. He was also planning on writing about his experiences in a book, but he was surprised that very few people encouraged him to go. Some even said that it was too late in life for him to do something like that. Steinbeck responded to those who wanted him to take life easy: “I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they were even encouraged by their wives and relatives, and it’s such a sweet trap.” Steinbeck didn’t listen to those who wanted him to forget his adventure. He ended up driving across the country and wrote his famous book Travels with Charlie: In Search of America. Just before he left on his trip, a well known and highly respected political reporter, who was excited about what Steinbeck was going to do, told him, “If anywhere in your travels you come on a man with guts, mark the place. I want to go see him. I haven’t seen anything but cowardice and expediency. This used to be a nation of giants. Where have they gone? You can’t defend a nation with a board of directors. That takes men. Where are they?”
There is a taming of the human spirit that has taken place in our land. We have become lulled to sleep in a land of plenty. We have been caressed by the culture, and we like it. Many Christians are so complacent about their faith that they do not even practice the basic elements such as Bible study, prayer, witnessing, acts of mercy, etc., because they are so busy with the other things of life. The world around us has softened us to the place that we are just like the rest of the world. Other things have crowded our lives and demanded our time. Something other than God is now in control of our lives, and we are complacent spiritually. The adventure has gone out of our relationship with God. We have settled for something less than what we thought we would — and it’s such a sweet trap. The television and internet have hypnotized us and told us that we can live in virtual reality rather than reality itself . We take the path of least resistance and settle into spiritual apathy that says, “Why bother,” or “I’ll take care of that later.” Being ho-hum spiritually leads to being ho-hum about life. It is a loss of values.
So what can we do? We are bored in the middle of a land of affluence. What has happened to sink us in this swamp of complacency? I would suggest first that: We value security over significance. We play it safe. We want to be secure. We move away from things that threaten or disrupt our security and cause change. We choose the familiar, even if it is destructive in our lives, because at least we know how to deal with it. It is threatening to do the things that will actually give our lives meaning and significance, so we move away from them. John Steinbeck said: “We spend all our time searching for security — and then we hate it when we get it.” The problem is that we look in the mirror and see what we have become.
There is no better story to illustrate this than the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt. They knew they hated slavery — it’s no fun being beaten and worked to death. They cried out to God in their misery, but they saw no way out and only saw themselves as slaves. But Moses appeared on the scene, announcing that they were, in fact, the people of God, and that God was going to deliver them and make them into a great nation. This was something that they could not imagine, and what made it worse was that when Moses went to Pharaoh and told him to release God’s people, he only made their work harder. Moses tried to tell the people that the Lord loved them and was determined to free them, but the Bible says, “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage” (Exodus 6:9).
Later, when they crossed the Red Sea and were free from their terrible and dehumanizing burden of slavery, they became afraid of their freedom. The Bible reports: “The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost — also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic’” (Numbers 11:4-5). At no cost? How soon they forgot that they paid for their food with grinding labor. The cost of the food was their freedom.
And then, when they were about to finally enter the Promise Land, we are surprised to read: “That night all the people of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, ‘If only we had died in Egypt! . . .Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?’ And they said to each other, ‘We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt’” (Numbers 14:1-4). Imagine it! Slavery looked better than freedom because they valued security over significance. They preferred being slaves over the frightening aspect of being free and the responsibilities that involved. They would rather be insignificant than be insecure. And because of this, they settled into apathy and complacency about the possibilities in their future. They did not want to do what it took to be the people of God. They lost their courage, and because of it, they lost their meaning and direction.
We are not unlike the Israelites. We are enslaved to the things of this world: materialism, pleasure, comforts, ease, safety. We are slaves to our stuff, our schedules and our selfishness. We don’t want to have to stand out or be different. We want to blend in with everyone else. We don’t like change. We are afraid to be free. We know life could have more meaning, but we play it safe and settle for security.
I was so impressed by the story in the news of Abdul Rahman, the man who was on trial in Afghanistan because he converted to Christianity from Islam. (I wrote about his in the latest Messenger.) The leading Muslim clergy were calling for the death sentence. It would have been very easy for Rahman to choose security. He had a wife and two children. He could have forgotten the whole thing and blended into his culture. The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman would change his religion back to Islam, but he refused. He said, “They want to sentence me to death, and I accept it.” He was ready to die for his faith. His love for Christ would not allow him to settle for being safe. He said he was ready to die, because as he said, “Somebody, a long time ago, did it for all of us.” Amazing! Pray for the many other Afghan Christians, and many like them, who did not make the news, but are also suffering for their faith and in great danger. They are ready to die for their faith, and we are afraid to mention ours. We would rather be slaves of fear than have the significance of a faithful witness.
The second thing I would suggest that keeps us locked in apathy is: We value what is easy over what takes effort. We may never know who the greatest athletes were, because the ones with the greatest natural talent may have been the ones who never put forth the effort to be all that they could be. We may never know who the greatest minds were, since it was lesser minds who made the great discoveries and wrote the greatest books, because they were willing to work hard and do what was necessary to achieve. We may never know the people who could have made the greatest contributions to the kingdom of God, because it was lesser souls who were willing to do what was necessary to grow spiritually, do the work and sacrifice in order to make a difference.
But effort is not what is valued in our society. I see the ads for the diets where you can eat all you want and lose weight. I see the ad for the exercise machine that tells me I can use it just 15 minutes a day and not only get in shape, but look as ripped as the models. Or better yet, someone has just come out with the “One Minute Workout” video. I heard an advertisement from a financial advisor this week that said he would show me how to “spend my way to wealth.” Now that’s a plan I’m interested in — I could eat my way to health, spend my way to wealth, and sleep my way into shape — if only it was that easy. The easy way is not always the best way, in fact it usually turns out to be the worst way. Real life takes effort, and real people know that.
I have always loved the prayer of Amy Carmichael:
From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.
From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.
If I had to choose, I would rather burn out than rust out. I would rather die trying than never try at all. I don’t want to be like the church at Laodicea to whom Jesus said, “So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16). I don’t want to sink to be a clod, I want to be fuel for the flame of God.
The third thing I would suggest that keeps us sinking into complacency is: We value the material over the spiritual. It is difficult to live in a materialistic world like we do. At no other time in history has so much been available to a people. In times past, a feast was something unusual; today we feast at every meal. We eat better and have more available to us than the kings of days gone by. When we go to buy something, we can not only get what we want, but in the color, style, size and quantity we want. It is easy to love the material world and forget the spiritual world. We buy things for an emotional pick-me-up. We use things to make us feel important. We place our status and security in things. But Jesus warned: “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24).
Jim Elliot was a missionary who lost his life trying to reach the unknown tribes of Ecuador. He was a man of unusual spiritual insight and passion. He once wrote: “Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on Earth! I care not if I never raise my voice again for him, if only I may love him, please him. Perhaps in mercy he shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore his delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see him, touch his garments, smile into his eyes — ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only himself.”
When our minds are on the stuff of this world, spiritual complacency sets in. It was Jim Elliot who said: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” The apostle Paul talked of the people of his day saying, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready” (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). Spiritual infancy is caused by being absorbed in the material world. Worldliness causes spiritual dullness, staleness and complacency.
A fourth attitude that contributes to the problem of complacency in our lives is: We value mediocrity over excellence. We give our spiritual lives a hit and a lick and think that will do — if we do anything at all. We settle for what is good enough and never reach what is best. We do not strive for excellence.
In our Scripture reading this morning, the apostle John talks to the Ephesian church. He lists their positive attributes: they do not tolerate wickedness; they have survived persecution, and endured hardships. But there is something subtle that is missing — they have lost their first love. They had settled for doing the right thing, but they had not continued to fervently love the right person. They were doing okay, but they had lost the excitement of the faith and their original love for their Lord. They had gotten into the rut of only doing what was necessary and overlooked the most important aspect of what it meant to be the people of God.
Ravi Zacharias tells this story: “I remember well in the early days of my Christian faith talking to a Hindu. He was questioning the strident claims of the followers of Christ as being something supernatural. He absolutely insisted ‘conversion was nothing more than a decision to lead a more ethical life and that in most cases it was not any different to those claims of other “ethical” religions.’ So far, his argument was not anything new. But then he said something that I have never forgotten, and often reflect upon: ‘If this conversion is truly supernatural, why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians that I know?’ His question is a troublesome one. After all, no Buddhist claims a supernatural life but frequently lives a more consistent one. The same pertains to many of other faiths. Yet, how often the so-called Christian, even while proclaiming some of the loftiest truths one could ever express, lives a life bereft of that beauty and character.”
We can choose the ho-hum existence of someone who is playing it safe, loving the material world and wanting what is comfortable and easy. We can live mediocre lives, or we can make a commitment to excellence, to do what is difficult, search for significance and live on a spiritual plane that overcomes the sleep of apathy. But be careful, you might wake up.
Rodney J. Buchanan
April 2, 2006
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
