New Level

I came to a surprising realization last night. Over the last few years, I’ve turned to God chiefly to get my own problems fixed. By and large, that result has been achieved. Things are going extremely well for me, and they’re going to go even better in days to come. So what am I supposed to do now? I know what the answer is. I have to help other people get what I now have.

My health is great. I’m not worried about financial survival. I’m making lots of wonderful friends. My lifelong overeating problem is history, as are some other bad habits. My inner life is vastly improved, and it gets better every week. There isn’t that much left to do. This all came about through power which developed as I grew. The power is still there. Now it needs a job. With my own problems shrinking and disappearing, the best viable targets are other people’s problems. It’s either that or sit around in comfort, waiting to die.

I think hooking up to God’s power is a little like reacting to a pressure loss in a plane, when you’re traveling with a kid. When the oxygen mask drops, you don’t put it on the child. If you do that, you pass out and die, and then the kid rips the mask off, and he dies, too. You put your own mask on first. That keeps you conscious so you can take care of the kid.

I have at least two prayer sessions a day. The first one is about me and my family. I don’t worry about other people until the second one. I think that’s wise. The more stable and serene we are, the more we will be able to do for others. If you don’t get yourself functioning before you direct your attention outward, you will be a blind guide. You’ll have a beam in your eye, while you’re telling other people about the dust specks in their eyes. You may become legalistic. You can get so frustrated with the stupid things other people do, you spend time criticizing and offending them when you’re supposed to be showing them the way out of their troubles. I’ve had a real problem with that; I still fight it. It’s not all that subtle.

If I understand the New Testament correctly, the biggest virtue you can have is a heartfelt concern for the well-being of others. It’s one of the fruit of the Spirit. It is not something I was overly burdened with from birth. When I joined my church, their questionnaire asked what things I thought I needed to work on, and I listed this. I don’t want to be a crab all my life, kvetching about other people’s errors instead of empathizing with them and improving the world.

I used to see the stuff of my morning prayers–my family’s needs–as my primary focus. The things I took up later in the day, I took up mainly because I knew I was obligated to do so. Obviously, I cared about other people, and that entered my thinking, but obligation played a bigger role in my daily motivation than empathy. It’s tough to see past your needs and your family’s needs while you’re heavily engaged in battling to meet them. Now I think I’m going to have more bandwidth to devote to others. Within my own family, I’m going to have more bandwidth to devote to my father and my sister, since my own problems take up less of it.

It’s a shift in focus. Like winning in Iraq and turning to Afghanistan (not that I’m suggesting the US is doing a good job of that).

The Bible says perfect love casts out fear. If I understand it correctly, in the context in which that verse appears, it means you can’t beat anxiety and fear without turning your attention to other people. “He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” I don’t know why it works that way, but it seems to be true, and I do not want anxiety in my life.

It’s not an obvious truth, so it’s worth pointing out to other people who want inner peace and don’t know why it evades them. Check out 1 John 4 and see what you think.

It’s working for me.