I was headed east on I-64 into the rising sun for Zach’s cross country meet in Hanover.
As I was scanning through radio stations, I came upon an interview that had just begun with a couple, Justin and Trisha, who had started a ministry years ago out of their own marital despair. As the conversation evolved, they described that going into marriage, they believed that if they loved Jesus and loved each other, the rest would take care of itself and their marriage would thrive.
But as years progressed, they found their marriage to be anything but thriving. Trisha acknowledged that after having a child just a little over a year in, her hopes to gradually change Justin as she desired didn’t pan out. Meanwhile, while the couple became increasingly focused on various achievements, including starting a new church, and as their family grew to five, they found themselves drifting further and further apart.
One day, after about a decade of marriage, Justin came home and told Trish that he was done. Today. After he left, Trish indicated that her primary focus was getting him back, feeling that this was the key to keeping the marriage alive. But in seeking out a counselor, the advice was not at all what she was expecting, and at the time seemed like the worst advice she could have been given: you’ve got to let go of him, and work on you. Meanwhile, Justin found himself plunged into a period of darkness as he felt himself going against what God wanted him to do.
The broadcast began to break up as I entered into the Hoosier National Forest. No longer able to decipher what was being said, I reached up and worked to untangle the Rosary from the rearview mirror as I started to pray. Instantly, I found myself in the left lane of the interstate; fortunately, no one was near me, and so I moved back to the right side (and later finished the Rosary).
A collective awareness pinged into my mind, gradually linking itself to a quote I had heard years ago. At the height of his popularity, CS Lewis received a letter from a woman, asking a basic, yet challenging question. If you were to sum up the Christian experience, what would you say. Lewis’s response: “Do your present duty, bear your present pain, enjoy your present pleasure, and let the emotions and experiences take care of themselves.”
At this moment, my present duty was to pay attention to the road and drive safely. It was not just my human duty, but my spiritual duty, too, because while saying the Rosary might be a wonderful expression of my faith, God’s design in that moment was predicated on my control of the car. Failure to see the sacredness in this responsibility could carry dire consequences for myself, my family, and others on the road. While I hoped that God might spare me from my distractions, if I swerved off the road, the only surety I had was how I was using my free will.
Polls indicate that we live in an increasingly divisive, atheistic world. Thanks in a large part to the internet and social media, the number of voices leveraging their public opinion has only increased. The faithful and unfaithful alike are experiencing rates of loneliness and mental health issues never seen before. Hidden behind all the rhetoric and politicization is a harsh, but real reality. All the arguing and debate, even though it has its place, isn’t creating a seismic shift for good that can only occur from within.
As the story goes (not without its own controversy), renowned Christian apologist GK Chesterton was asked by The Times, “What’s wrong with the world today?” To which he reportedly replied, “Dear Sir. I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”
Inherent in this story, and the one told by Justin and Trisha about their marriage, isn’t that we shouldn’t base our lives and relationships on love of God and others, but rather that when we don’t take care of the day-to-day details entrusted to us, and become complacent in our circumstances, we can easily find ourselves in dire straits. Whether it is effective communication, empathetic understanding, personal fitness, or any other factor that involves God’s design of who we are, the overarching message is that if we don’t embrace a growth mindset, things can unravel even amid the best of intent. As Trisha noted, it is only when we let go of what (or whom) we can’t control, and instead focus on the way that we need to grow, including in our relationship with God, will things begin to change for good, in our homes and in our world.
There’s one problem, though, as Leo Tolstoy said so piercingly years ago:
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
As human beings, we are wired for self-protection, and so when something makes us nervous or angry, we are quick to find ways to “shelter in place” with the people and beliefs that we have, and not consider ways that we might need to change and step outside of our comfort zones. In this modern age of 24-hour news coverage and social media, often of an incendiary nature, our bandwidth for personal change is often subsumed under an insatiable desire to consume information about the people and events that either bother, and/or most resonate with us.
Meanwhile, as we spend countless hours in media consumption, the often real opportunities available for change—the daily challenges and nuances that exist within our own minds, bodies, and homes—lie unaddressed and unresolved. Truth be told, it’s way easier and more reinforcing to listen to a podcast or read a story which aligns with how we feel, than to put forth effort into an area of much-needed personal growth by which there is no guarantee of success or happiness.
With all respect to Tolstoy, I would argue that it’s not that people don’t think of changing themselves; its that they are scared, and/or exhausted by the thought of it. There’s a reason that over 90% of secular and religious media has to do with news, opinions, and curiosities and not a focus on personal growth; it’s because it demands little of us.
Yet the stark reality is that if we were ever serious about changing any aspect of this world, we would spend just as much (or more) time doing formative things as we would doing reinforcing, comforting ones. This isn’t a pushback against the importance of entertainment and leisure. As Lewis noted, the Christian experience is all about enjoying our “present pleasures” and there are a zillion ways available that align with God’s design, especially if we see are willing to see the world as He created it, not necessarily just as we would have it.
What this plea is really about is that in our world’s obsession with being heard and comforted, and our professed desire to do the utmost good, we are missing the most obvious of opportunities. Just like Trisha and Justin recognized that God couldn’t save their marriage from their own complacency, so we must recognize that God’s design of this world demands that we take an active role in everything that we do. And not just an active role, but a spiritual perspective.
As I found myself swerving into the adjacent lane on I-64, I was once again reminded that the free will given to me—imbued with attention, fine-motor control, critical-thinking, and many other attributes—-was no less a divine gift than the Rosary that I was preparing to say. To quote St. Paul,
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”
Mired in the complacent, critical culture of today is a lost opportunity. Simply put, we are wasting massive amounts of time on things we have little control over, and spending precious little time on what we can control. I’m all for staying informed, and engaging in a civil, healthy debate. But at the end of the day, what I do (or don’t do) and who I am becoming is going to have far more influence on this world than anything else.
As our lives are short, let us heed the words of the late Bishop Ken Untener, which became part of what is known as the Romero Prayer:
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
