Simplify life and make room for God at center

In the spring, as I attended some ten commencement exercises and addressed the graduates, I cited several pitfalls they must seek to avoid on the path of life.

I'd like to share those observations with the readers of this column because they are temptations we all face in the contemporary milieu.

The first pitfall, paradoxically is a plethora of choices before us. Today, we possess more choices or options for personal and professional growth than any generation in the history of the world.

Blessing and curse

In one sense, that's a tremendous blessing to be seized and cherished. But there is growing evidence from the research of the behavioral sciences that too many choices can lead not to greater happiness and satisfaction but to paralysis and discontent.

Why is this? For starters, increased choice creates an enormous burden on people to seek the information needed to make a good decision. But who has the time to find the best digital camera, the best cell-phone plan, the best iPod, the best 401K, the best school for oneself and one's children etc.?

What's more, plentiful choice increases the chances that people will wind up regretting decisions that they have made because they lament all the bypassed alternatives or all the foregone options, be it the choice of a college, career, job, house or spouse.

Burden of choice

Furthermore, with so many options available, there is the fear of having to take personal responsibility for making the wrong choice, for selecting the option that turns out to be less than perfect.

That burden can easily become a source of anger, frustration, discouragement, disillusionment and depression.

My point is that, if we are not careful, the increased choices we have may not serve to liberate us, but to tyrannize us. So we must not become over-obsessed with choice.

Taking risks

Of course, we have the responsibility to be informed and prudent. But we must also be willing to take risks and to explore new frontiers.

In so doing, we will learn an amazing thing: We can make mistakes and be wrong, which is all part of being human.

But, if we are to grow as persons, and to make the unique and distinctive contributions God has in mind for us to make, we must be willing to accept ourselves as failure-prone. We must recognize that we can fall down, mess up and goof up, but also that we can rise up, measure up and grow from our mistakes, and that progress is truly possible for us.

That is the glory of the human person God has revealed and history has taught us repeatedly.

'Affluenza'

The second temptation is succumbing to the disease referred to as "affluenza," that virus of rapacious consumption that seeks happiness and fulfillment in a never-ending quest for acquisition.

We in this country are sculpted and shaped from cradle to grave to live and act as consumers. We are bombarded incessantly with high-powered advertising techniques that seek to create more and greater needs.

As a result, the superfluous becomes the convenient; the convenient becomes the necessary; and the necessary becomes the indispensable, let the chips fall where they may, be it the chips of unethical business practices, abortion, adultery, euthanasia or whatever else suits one's convenience.

Discrepancies

The evidence of widespread affluenza is documented in a book on this topic: "Affluenza" by John De Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor.

They point out, for example, that we Americans spend more on jewelry and watches ($80 billion) than on higher education ($65 billion).

American CEOs now make 400 times as much as the average worker (a tenfold increase since 1980). More than 70 percent of America visits a mall weekly. The average American family carries nearly $8,000 in credit card debt, while 60 percent of our families have so little by way of financial reserves that they could sustain their lifestyles for only about a month if they were to lose their jobs.

Simplify

We must seek to break free from that lifestyle of high consumption, of wasteful depletion of resources, of affluent use of service and leisure that abound within our society, so that we might listen to what Gospel values have to say.

Gospel values tell us how "blessed are the poor in spirit"...Gospel values point out that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven...Gospel values tell us we should be content to be fed and be clothed.

While most would readily admit that those are Gospel norms and values, unfortunately far too few people are willing to take the steps necessary or to make the sacrifices required to translate those evangelical counsels into lived realities.

For example, the poor person says, "Let the rich begin; I've had enough frugality already." And the rich person says, "Why should I give up what I've acquired legitimately? Besides, if this is going to work, everyone must be in the same boat. Therefore, let somebody else begin and then we'll see."

The net result is that no one does anything.

Option for poor

The challenge for us, therefore, is to create a simpler and sustainable lifestyle:

* one that is less dependent on money, status, prestige, affluence and influence;

* one that is more open and available in service to others;

* a lifestyle characterized by simplicity in clothing, diet, transportation and entertainment; and

* a lifestyle characterized by prayers for, advocacy on behalf of and service to the poor.

Poverty of spirit

Further, this preferential option for the poor must extend itself not only to those who are materially needy but also to those who are spiritually impoverished.

The most pitiful form of human poverty is not the deprivation of material goods and possessions but the lack of knowledge of God or the lack of a meaningful relationship with God.

St. Augustine described this fundamental human phenomenon some 17 centuries ago when he observed, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

'All about me'

That brings me to the third temptation we must avoid in today's society: narcissism. In 2004, The New York Times columnist David Brooks opined that this syndrome is optimized by Mitch Albom's best-seller, "The Five People You Meet in Heaven."

It is a fable about an 85-year-old man who feels lonely, adrift and unimportant, and who dies trying to save a little girl from a broken carnival ride.

He goes to heaven and meets five people who tell him he is not alone and his life is not unimportant. They reconcile him with his father, who had been cruel to him. They remind him of what a great person he was. He gets time to spend with his wife, whom he neglected and who died young. And he is forgiven for all the hurts he accidentally committed while alive.

The heaven that Albom describes -- and which attracted such a large readership -- is nothing more than an excellent therapy session. Brooks notes that, in the book, "God, to the extent He does exist, is sort of a genial Dr. Phil. When you go to His heaven, friends and helpers come to tell you how innately wonderful you are. They help you reach a closure. In this heaven, God and His glory are not the center of attention. It is all about you."

God at center

Coming to a similar conclusion in his book, "The Culture of Narcissism," Christopher Lasch writes that too often people have fallen into a therapeutic mentality that is an anti-religion, a mentality that refuses to accept any outside authority but which focuses exclusively on one's own emotional needs.

What must be recaptured in contemporary thinking, therefore, is an understanding that we human beings are not the center of the universe; God is.

God is the creator and sustainer of life. God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the source and reason for our life and existence.

God and us

We must appreciate that God is the measure, not what is measured. It is God's plan of life that must enlighten and guide us. It is God's message we must receive, integrate into our lives and communicate to others. And it is God's mission of love and selfless service on behalf of others that we must implement in our world.

If this is not the case, if it is not God's moral and spiritual imperatives that are the ultimate norm and standard by which our decisions are made and against which our results are evaluated, then our efforts -- well-motivated and well-intentioned as they may be, and successful as they may be from a social, fiscal or humanitarian point of view -- will be as the proverbial sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

They will fail to communicate that life-giving power and strength that God and God alone can give.

I hope that we will seek to avoid the paralysis of choice, the sickness of affluenza and the culture of narcissism by making room for God and Gospel values in our lives.

(8/24/06) [[In-content Ad]]