Life is a not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
~Charlotte Joko Beck
There are a few sayings that I live by. One of them you see at the beginning of every post. Another one is also from Charlotte Joko Beck that I will share in this post.
The saying really made a huge impact on me during one cold morning 19 years ago. I was standing in the parking lot of a large insurance office building in Overland Park, Ks., a wealthy community in the Kansas City area. I had left a happy pastorate to be part of a church plant. Professionally speaking, it was my shot at the “the big time.” Being a minister is in many ways like other professional careers. We plan to “move up the ladder,” from larger church to larger church—well, at least, that was the plan. Except that for me, it wasn’t working out. Being a un-Orthodox, “quirky,” just-left-of-center minister in a very conservative denomination, I was almost forty years old and still in small churches. This church plant was my chance to be part of what was supposed to quickly grow into a contemporary, wealthy, mega-church. The only hitch was that I had to find a “secular” job to support myself until the church became large enough to start paying us salaries.
Pastoring skills mean squat in “the real world.” With over a double-major in Religion & Philosophy from college, a Master of Divinity Degree, and Doctor of Ministry work, plus over a decade of pastoring experience under my belt, I found myself as a security guard at a nine-story office building, making minimum wage. “It’s simply a means to an end,” I kept telling myself. The church plant imploded, fell apart, and I was left in charge of helping it come to an end gracefully after a terrible conflict that took a very high toll on me. Now, being a rent-a-cop was no longer a means to an end, it was my job. At the age of 4o, when I should have been at the height of my “professional career,” I was making minimum wage, and my wife and I were going deeper in debt every year. And for what?
For some reason, the CEO of that office building decided that I needed to stand out in the freezing cold in the parking lot every morning, watching the cars come in, people arriving for work. I couldn’t understand it. Everyone I talked to at the company thought it was just as stupid as I thought it was, but there I was that cold winter morning, freezing my butt off, watching people with real jobs coming in to work.
I hit a new low in my spiritual depression, and I had been depressed for over a year. I was angry with God, and at the same time afraid that my worst insecurity fears about myself had finally come true—that I really was a failure. I had spent two years begging—I mean, begging and pleading—with God for a good job. And He wasn’t listening. So that morning, at the age of 40, and at the lowest point of my life, I seriously wondered if being a Christian was worth it.
I mean, we had given up a pastorate in Oklahoma, moved to Kansas City following God’s direction, swallowed the humiliation of not being able to get anything other than a minimum wage job—but I was doing it for the church plant—and I was each year going in debt. And the church plant collapsed. I had no ministry. WHY was I there? And was this what I got for following God’s leading—freezing my backside off in a parking lot for people who didn’t care? Is THIS what you get for faithfully following God?
I had never in my life been angrier at God, and that morning, I was seriously considering abandoning Him, abandoning Christianity, abandoning my faith, completely. Frankly, it wasn’t worth it. I’d had it.
Authors have always been my advisors, teachers, counselors and mentors, and they kicked in that morning. First, it occurred to me that I tried life without God before, and I was miserable then, too. So life without God was not a key to happiness. I remembered that from experience. For better or for worse, God was all I had. As one author, the psalmist Asaph wrote, “Who have I in heaven but You?” (Psalm 73:25). Second, I remembered Bernhard Anderson’s classic book, Understanding the Old Testament, and his treatment on the book of Job. He asks “the Job question”: Why are the pious faithful? Was it for the reward, the payoff? Anderson asserts that the pious are faithful because it is who they are. I had to ask myself, Why was I a Christian? Was it for the payoff? For the Christian version of the American good life—the big church, big salary, new home and new car? Or was I faithful because as a Christian, that’s who I was? It really made me re-examine my motif for being a Christian. Had I been in it for the wrong reason? Should I not be faithful because being a disciple of Jesus Christ is who I am?
And then there was a quote from the Buddhist author, Charlotte Joko Beck. She was talking in one of her books about the Bible passage, Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Beck interprets that passage as meaning that since we have been crucified with Christ—the self is dead—I no longer live, but Christ now lives in me. Our lives, then, are not ours, they are His. And 1 Corinthians 6:19b-20, Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. We are not our own. We no longer live. Christ lives in us. Therefore, Beck concludes that since my life is not my own, then…
My life is none of my business.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I belong to Christ. My life is none of my business. It was literally like a shaft of light broke through the heavy winter clouds. So what if I’m 40 years old and I’m a lowly, minimum-wage rent-a-cop freezing in the parking lot? It’s not my life. My life belongs to Christ, and if this is what He wants me to do, then who am I to complain? As Beck said, who am I to tell God that my life should be different than it is? That my life is not satisfactory, not what I want? It’s not my life anyway.
It all added up for me that morning when I was seriously considering walking away from The Faith.
--I had lived without Christ in my life before, and I was miserable. Walking away from Christ wasn’t going to fix anything. For better or for worse, God was all I had.
--Why had I been faithful? For the reward, or because being Jesus’ disciple who I am?
--And it’s not my life anyway. My life is none of my business.
I told Christ that morning that if this was what He wanted for the rest of my life, for me to be a minimum-wage security guard, then that truly was fine with me. My life was His, and He could do whatever He wanted with it. And a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, along with all the anger, disappointment, and a deep depression. At one point previously the depression had become so severe I literally thought I was cracking up. But from that morning on, not only did I have a peace I had never known before, I felt that my faith had reached a depth, a deeper level, than it ever had before.
I can’t tell you that the next day I got a great job offer. We stayed in Kansas City for another year, and I was happy to do so. The next winter we moved to Indiana, where I was on staff at a great church, and had 9 wonderful years there.
But I’ve never forgotten what I learned that day. That my life is none of my business. It makes the mystery that is my life an open frontier. The mystery is even more wonderful. It makes the journey lighter because it lessens the baggage. It means more contentment because if I am following Christ, I cannot look at my life and say, “This is wrong. This isn’t what my life is supposed to be like.” Who am I to say?
I have been crucified with Christ. My life is not my own. It is Christ living in me. My life is none of my business.
How liberating!
Your Fellow Traveler,
~Steve
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