Progress Isn’t Intimacy. Importance Isn’t Worth.
“More and more of everything, faster and faster.”
Normally, the month of August is a 31-day black hole for me.
These last 7 years, friends and family outside my work community knew I’d text them all back in September. Directing a Residence Life department at a small, under-staffed college pretty much guaranteed I went AWOL this time of year and was too busy to be sorry about it.
But this August is different. After seven years of fast paced, job’s-never-done leadership, I’m suddenly *GASP*…… nobody’s leader. A few weeks ago, I left my dual positions at Emmanuel College to prepare for a season of missions. In early 2022, my wife and I will relocate to Los Angeles to serve our first field assignment. Until then, I have no insanely busy nine-to-five.
No one calls me boss. I’ve got no agonizing decisions to make that affect a department of 27 people and a campus of 600 students. No team meetings. No endless group texts and mile-long email threads. No Zoom calls I’m multi-tasking through to stay afloat. (Now that’s all on my bestie, Josh, my crowned successor).
This August,
my life,
is temporarily,
… s l o w e r …
And, for a little while I have something I haven’t had in a long time: Margin.
Margin is the space between you and your absolute limits.[1] Most of us don’t live with margin because we live consistently at or beyond our limits. The American Progress Machine works hard to keep it that way. Why? Because, as Dr. Richard Swenson (who wrote a fantastic book called Margin) observes:
“the American definition of happiness is more than I have now… And living for more than I have now never gives us “less and less, slower and slower.” Always, “more and more, faster and faster.” It’s the progress-oriented life formula with which we’re all familiar and, to varying degrees, tempted to become obsessed with.
But living obsessed with more than I have now isn’t just a disease that affects materialistic wolves of Wall Street or fickle Hollywood types. You know, those worldly caricatures of sinners we warn good Christian folks against…the fast cars, fast money, fast sex people. No, living obsessed with more than I have now is a disease that reaches for the jugular of anyone who just wants to feel relevant and important. Which, hey, is all of us. Especially young Christian guys and gals struggling to learn what it means to love Jesus while stewarding positions of leadership and ministry.
People like Jon Campbell.
Today, from where I’m currently sitting—hidden away from the busier world, seated at the dining room table in my parents’ house on a Wednesday morning when I have nowhere to be, no one waiting on me, and no companion other than this loud, ticking clock in the next room—I realize how much of the last 7 years I unintentionally spent chasing my own renditions of Americanized more-than-I-have-now happiness and then dressing them in Christianized doing-stuff-for-Jesus costumes.
Moving through my post-undergrad twenties meant I needed to signal to people all the different ways I wasn’t wasting my life. It meant humble-bragging about how “…yeah, like, I work two full time jobs or whatevvs, and I’m also like the leader in both of them (no biggie, just got two “director” titles to my name and whatnot)…and oh yeah I also do all this volunteer stuff too with missions organizations and other places… and did I mention that, like yeah, I’m also in full time grad school... and, oh psh, I also just published my first book in the middle of all this…oh, and I also…”
How quickly my worth became the sum of all my “also’s.” With each extra thing, I felt a little more important and a bit less insecure. The also’s were proof of progress, and progress was proof I was significant. Relevant. Useful. That I was really killing the life-purpose game with Jesus.
But this August, I don’t have many “also’s.” I’m exposed. I’m nothing before God but my vulnerable self. No director titles. No name badge. No office. No impressively busy schedule. No writing-a-book hype. And I’m living with my parents again.
“How quickly my worth became the sum of all my also’s.”
Gorsh, am I even important anymore?
On the one hand, I’m loving every minute of it. Margin is fantastic. And I’ve needed it—desperately. It’s awesome going to bed not fearing how/when I’ll be woken up in the middle of the night to respond to some incident (public enemy #1 for any ResLifer). It’s awesome not having 4250982734 new emails every morning. It’s awesome not feeling personally responsible for other people’s morale in impossible situations.
On the other hand, this sudden abundance of margin is asking my soul some heavy-handed questions. Especially this one:
Did doing all those things—all those “also’s”—really bring me closer to Jesus?
This question sobers me up quick. I get fidgety thinking about it. What if all that stuff DIDN’T bring me closer to Jesus? Am I hypocrite? My fidgetiness is doubled knowing my next title will be “Missionary.” I’m heading into a line of work that doesn’t work unless you actually are close to Jesus.
So, the question: did the last seven years of being ridiculously busy racking up my “also’s” bring me closer to Jesus?
Honestly, the answer is yes and no and neither.
Here’s the big gotcha! plot twist: that’s not the point. Nor is it the right question to ask. Why? Because things are never the point. Activities, jobs, titles, books, degrees, and everything else—all these are mere accessories. Unavoidable, and obstinately neutral. Accessories which themselves can neither be blamed nor praised for our proximity to Jesus. We alone are responsible for that. Our heart alone decides how the things in our life and the also’s on our resume either draw us closer to or push us farther from Jesus. It’s not about lack/abundance, busy/not busy, being center stage/temporarily sidelined. Intimacy is what counts. Intimacy with the Master of the Harvest is the deciding factor in whether our life’s accessories bear actual fruit or morph into fruitless medications for our insecurity.
There are two directions we could go from here. One: the “we need more margin and fewer things in our lives” direction. When I started writing this, that’s the direction I thought I was heading. And that’s fine I guess. For the sake of intimacy with Christ, we do need more space between ourselves and our limits. Sabbath and Fasting are maybe the two most powerful-yet-neglected spiritual disciplines in the American Church because we routinely underestimate the value of less-is-more. We value production over prayer. Movement over stillness. The closer we are to workaholism, the more fruit we assume we produce for the Kingdom. And, honestly, does God really want us lying down in green fields beside still waters? Sounds lazy.
But the less-stuff-more-margin formula for intimacy is, by itself, too idealistic to answer the brutishness of reality. It’s a pipe dream to imagine life ever getting less busy and less populated by things and also’s. No matter how frequently we retreat into moments of margin (vacations, mental health days, sabbaticals, walks outside, listening to your Apple watch tell you to breathe for a minute, etc.), we’ll always be drawn back into the relentless rush of a progress-obsessed world. There’s no escaping it—things and also’s never fail to come rocketing back through our atmosphere. And if they’re always going to be there, isn’t learning how to more healthily relate to them as important as learning to more consistently retreat from them?
“Accessories themselves can neither be blamed nor praised for our proximity to Jesus.”
So, I’d rather take the second direction. Rather than asking how can we get away more from the things and locate intimacy with Jesus outside our also’s (which is necessary sometimes), some solid questions to ask are ones aimed at preserving intimacy with Jesus more consistently inside all the things and in relation to the also’s (which is necessary all the time).
That said, here are five questions to contemplate with the Holy Spirit:
Amid all my life’s things, am I treasuring the love of Jesus? Or am I forgetting my first love?
Am I obsessed with progress? Or possessed with being faithful?
Is my worth rooted in relevance and applause? Or intimacy and truth?
Do I care as much for honoring Jesus in little, unseen moments as I do in big, noticeable ones?
If I suddenly lost all my things and also’s, would I be okay with who I am? Would I be okay with just Jesus?
A reminder from Jesus:
“…life does not consist in the abundance of possessions (things, also’s, progress).” -Luke 12:15
Instead, may we be a people who remember that the same Lord who sends us out to the nations to make disciples also draws us back home to the Shepherd’s field, to rest in green meadows by peaceful streams.
May we be a free people who do not compulsively need more to “lack nothing.”
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing.”
[1] Richard Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overladed Lives, Colorado Springs, NavPress, 2004. My thoughts and descriptions of margin in this article are shaped by this outstanding book, which you should definitely read.
