Parts in a Machine

Last night I watched the move Hugo. It was really good, and I would highly recommend it. It has beautiful sets and camera work, and it also touches on a number of what I think are important themes--purpose, new relationships, imagination, dreams. There was one scene in the movie that I especially liked, and I'm including it here:

Machines don't come with extra parts. Each part is important and has a purpose. Without each part, the machine does not operate to its full potential. Sometimes when a machine as complex as a car breaks down, it's because the smallest part of the engine is malfunctioning. Each part is needed.

We all want to know that we have a purpose. There is perhaps no other experience that leads to despair more than the feeling that your life is meaningless. We desperately desire to feel needed and important. That's what Hugo communicates in this scene. If the world is a machine, then each person in it has something to do, some purpose to fulfill. We can't get down on ourselves, thinking that we are just an extra part, because there are no extra parts. If we begin to think like we are useless, we will in fact miss the purpose that we do have.

The apostle Paul says something similar about how all of us fit into the church, but instead of using the metaphor of a machine, he talks about the human body. In 1 Corinthians 12, he says that just as each of our bodies is made up of many body parts, Christians are each a part of the body of Christ. In this passage, he rebukes to attitudes that lay on opposite extremes. On the one hand, a person in the church could feel overly superior, thinking that they do not need anyone else. Paul counters this by pointing out that even "dishonorable parts" of the body are needed for the body to properly function. On the other hand, there are those who feel overly inferior, as though they are not necessary. Against such thoughts, Paul says that the foot cannot say "Since I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body," and the ear cannot say, "Since I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body." If there were no feet or ears, the body could not walk or hear. Each part is necessary.

The body of Christ doesn't contain vestigial organs.

This truth is both comforting and challenging. It is comforting to know that my life isn't purposeless. I have a role to play in the world and in the church, and I was created with that role in mind. Even when others might tell me that I don't have much to offer, I can trust that God has a reason for having made me. But at the same time, this is all so challenging because it means there is something I should be doing! If I were an unnecessary part of the machine, I could just go along for the ride and never contribute. But since I am not an extra part, I have responsibility to fulfill my purpose. In a machine where each part is needed, no wheel or cog can slack off without the machine as a whole suffering.

What's the hardest thing about fulfilling your purpose in life?

Cocoon

I'm not very good at getting out of bed in the morning.

It was easier for me when I was in college. I was forced out from under my covers by the need to get to class at 7 a.m. every morning. I had somewhere to be. But now, I rarely need to be anywhere until the afternoon, so it's much more difficult to build up the gumption go crawl out of my bed and begin my day. When my alarm goes off, I think, "Oh, I can lay here for another ten minutes...I don't have anywhere to be." And then I'll add another ten minutes, and then another, and before I know it, I've been laying there for an hour longer than I had originally meant to, and my day has already become much less productive than it would have otherwise been.

The problem is that my bed is just so nice and warm in the morning. The world outside of my bed isn't. It's cold. It's can be kind of scary. People give me the stink-eye. But while I'm laying in bed, all is well, and it takes a lot of arguing with myself inside my head to eventually evict myself from my mattress.

In that moment each morning when I'm snuggled up in my nest, debating whether or not to begin my day, it feels like I'm in my own little cocoon. When it's time for a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it builds a cocoon around itself to protect it and to take up the task of metamorphosis. It must feel nice in those cocoons. I bet they're warm.

But a caterpillar isn't meant to stay in the cocoon. It's meant to break out with butterflies' wings and go soaring through the air. It needs to get out of the comfort it enjoyed in order to live the life for which it was made. After all, everyone likes butterflies more than they like caterpillars. No one goes to a "caterpillar garden" to look at a bunch of caterpillars crawling around. But they do go to butterfly gardens so that they can see the colors and the beauty of creatures that have left behind the warmth of the cocoon in order to fly.

Some people are great at living like butterflies. They're always looking for the next challenge or for a new environment. They have no problem leaving the comfort and safety of what they already know in order to experience something fresh and exciting. But then there are people like me. I'm a caterpillar, and a hesitant one at that. I don't like to get out of bed in order to begin the day's business. I don't like to leave my cocoon in order to fly. I don't like to step out of what is familiar to me in order to grow.

And yet, I recognize that doing such things is necessary to a successful life. While routine and rhythm aren't bad things, they can easily turn into stagnation, and a stagnant life isn't an very interesting or productive one. So I'll work on hitting my snooze button a little less, and you find out what you need to do to break out of your cocoon.

If that doesn't work, I'll start drawing up plans for that caterpillar garden.

All You Can Eat

Everyone likes to eat at a buffet.

When I was growing up, every Sunday after church my family would go to lunch at a buffet. Sometimes we'd go to a Chinese buffet, sometimes to an Italian buffet, sometimes to Golden Corral. The best thing about a buffet is obvious: you get to eat as much as you want. There is an entire smorgasbord at your fingertips. (Am I the only one who thinks about the rat Templeton singing about the fair in the Charlotte's Web movie when I hear the word "smorgasbord"?) 

This morning I was reading Genesis 2, and it seems like Adam had a bit of a buffet as his disposal. God places him in the Garden of Eden and says to him, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Adam was in paradise, and he could eat just about anything he wanted. His options were practically limitless. There was only one tree he was to stay away from. It would be like God saying to me, "David, you can eat whatever you want at Golden Corral, but just don't touch the green bean casserole." I think I would be able to hand that. What's one dish when there are so many others to choose from?

But when you're told that you can't have any of the green bean casserole, that casserole starts looks awfully good. And for Adam and Eve in the garden, even though they had the rest of the trees to enjoy, even though their lives were perfect, that one tree started looking good. And in just the next chapter, we read about how they ate from that tree, introducing sin to the human race.

I've heard preachers and writers try to boil sin down to its root. What is it that exists in all sin at a foundational level? I'm not sure that there is one single answer. Many people identify pride as the root of sin, and I think this is true in many cases. C.S. Lewis called pride the complete "anti-God state of mind." But there may be other roots of sin. I think that a common one is discontentment. We become unhappy with what we have, even when we have more than we could ever need, and we sin in order to get the few things we don't have.

That's what happens with Adam and Eve. They have everything they could (or maybe should) ever want. They have a harmonious, unbroken relationship with God. They've been given the pretty awesome command to "be fruitful and multiply." And they live at the greatest buffet ever known. But still, they're not happy with all that. They desire the one thing that has been withheld from them. Their discontentment leads to their sin.

The same process runs rampant in our own day and age. Even though a person has plenty of money and don't have to worry about making ends meet, he still desires more. Even though he has a happy marriage to a beautiful woman, he looks for more. Even though he enjoys his job, he does whatever it takes to get to the next level. Discontentment drives him to engage in a continuous quest for more, even if it takes sinful means to satisfy that hunger.

If discontentment doesn't lead us to sin, it at least makes it difficult for us to enjoy life as we have it. It gets easy for us to despair because of the things we don't have rather than taking joy in what we have been blessed with. 

This is a constant danger for me. My tendency is often to dwell on the things I feel my life lacks instead of appreciating what I do have. Because when I take a step back and look at my life, it is pretty great. I live 15 minutes from my favorite sports team's stadium. I have two jobs, when many people in the city are struggling to find one. I have not one, but two boxes of nutty bars in my cabinet. (Actually, it's down to one and a half now....I needed a post-dinner snack.) I'm going to a midnight showing of the Hunger Games movie in two weeks. I get to go to a school where I learn about the Bible. I'm pretty much the best looking person I know.

And yes, there are ways that I wish my life was different. I wish my beard was less wispy. I wish I had a research assistant who could help me out with the papers that I'm behind on. I wish girls wouldn't get so creeped out when I wink at them. But in light of all that I do have, these are pretty small issues. 

So today, take a few minutes to think about the things in your life that are good. Have yourself a little Thanksgiving Day celebration here in March. Maybe write out some of these things in a list. It'll help us from growing discontented. Sin will look less alluring, and life will feel more joyful.

What's good about your life right now?