When Life Gets Hectic, Whom Do You Serve?

Did you ever have one of those days or weeks that simply overwhelmed you? Of course you did. It's a near universal experience. So, when you have found yourself in a moment where life overwhelms you, what do you do? How do you respond when there is more to deal with than is possible, when the plate is too full and something has to fall off of it?

When life gets crazy, it often reveals something about the priorities that govern our lives. There's no easy and simple calculus here. Doing something in order to remain employed may require diminished time with loved ones who cannot be supported absent that employment. But success in one's career may simply be a higher priority than family, and it is remarkably easy to deceive oneself about such things.

A similar sort of self-deception often is at work in lives of faith. It is easy to fancy oneself faithful even when faith becomes one of those things that gets dropped when life is too busy or demanding. Pastors and other religious professionals have even more opportunities for self-deception because our "jobs" are connected to faith. However, that in no way means that doing our jobs is actually an act of faith or that serving God is even remotely connected to what we are busy doing.

Much of the Bible is about a covenant relationship between God and humans, a covenant relationship that is almost always understood to be communal or corporate in nature. This covenant relationship is there in the call to Abraham. It is there in Jesus' call to follow him. And it assumes significant responsibilities on both sides of the relationship. But as with human relationships, self-deception is often a problem.

Just as a career minded spouse may convince himself or herself that all that time at work is somehow about supporting a marriage relationship, people can delude themselves into thinking that their loyalties and passions are about their faith. How else to explain some people championing the right carry concealed weapons and "stand our ground" as Christian causes. This seems to me little more than projecting one's personal passions and causes onto one's God and faith. And the political right has no monopoly on such behavior. Liberal Christians often make liberalism their god.

That brings me back around to questions of what remains and what gets dropped when life gets too hectic to handle. Are the things remaining truly important things? Are they truly God's things? Or are they simply my things, things which may or may not really be faithful to the relationships and commitments I claim are priorities in my life?

There's an old Bob Dylan song with a line that says, "You gonna have to serve somebody. Well it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gonna have to serve somebody." When self-deception gets involved, I pretty sure it's usually the former.

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