The Easy Way Out
We are wired to take the easy way out.
Sad but true. It’s a side effect of our autonomic system that protects us from harm. Think flight or fight responses. We are wired to favor shortcuts over conscious thought.[1] And while that might help us when a baseball is being thrown at our head, it is ironically those same systems which hold onto stereotypes, make assumptions, and are resistant to change. That’s why we feel good when we eat comfort food or wear our favorite shirt or watch The Princess Bride for the 1000th time. The familiar is easy on our brain. It brings us comfort. We don’t have to think so hard. But if we’re not careful, it may also close us off to new opportunities and new experiences that could make our life even better! Take for example Star Trek. I grew up with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The Original Series (TOS). When they announced they were making a NEW show with NEW characters, I vowed not to watch. How dare they?! Of course it could never be as good as the original. I didn’t watch the entire first season in protest, despite the praise of the press, the critics, and even fellow Star Trek fans (traitors!). But eventually, I decided to give it a chance. And you know what? It was GREAT! I LOVED it! How stupid I felt for not watching it sooner. I missed out on a whole year of amazing episodes (thank God for reruns). But we are resistant to change. Our minds favor comfort, and unless we make a conscious effort to be open to new experiences, we could be missing out on a lot of what the world has to offer.
“Comfort is your enemy.”[2]
When we think of evil in the world today, we often come up with the most horrible images we can think of. Images that rattle our very belief in the world around us. The Holocaust. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Serial killers like Charles Manson. Humanity in its ultimate depravity. But those are the extremes. Those may be the most vibrant and visual instances of evil in the world, but they are also (thankfully) very rare. Instead, we need to remember there is evil is around us every single day and if we aren’t careful, if we aren’t deliberate, we could be willful participants in it. Comfort is one of the ways evil works in and through us. It might seem weird to think of comfort as an agent of evil, but have you ever been so snug under the sheets you just didn’t want to get up? That nice warm feeling of being in just the right spot all cuddled up with your favorite blanket around you? It feels so safe and so happy that you don’t want anything to change. And that’s how the devil sucks you in. He comes to us in our comfort and says, “You don’t want things to change, do you? It’s all nice and cozy exactly how it is. We should make sure it stays that way.” You get lulled into believing that’s true, that it would be the worst thing in the world to change things up, to do something a bit differently. And you end up in the same rut you’ve always been in.
Even when the alternative is BETTER, we often are blinded by our comfort.
That’s what happens to the young man in our passage today. Leading up to this passage, Jesus has been healing and teaching throughout the region. The Pharisees confront him on the topic of divorce and Jesus has to correct the disciples who are shooing away the children from approaching him. Then this rich young man comes up to him and asks him the key to eternal life. And this is what he says.
16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
18 “Which ones?” he inquired.
Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19:16-24
The problem for the rich, young man isn’t money.
It’s comfort. When Jesus says it’s hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, it’s not because being rich is evil or bad. It’s because having wealth makes you comfortable and it’s hard for us to leave a life of comfort. We’re wired to stick with what works. By all accounts, if we can accept his word as truth, the young man is a pretty good guy by our standards. He keeps all the commandments. He honors his parents. He loves his neighbor. Pretty good guy. But then Jesus challenges him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” And the guy walks away sad, because it would mean giving up the life he is used to living. Familiarity breeds comfort and comfort is the enemy of progress.
Why change what works?
That’s the reason people are so fond of the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But if that were the case, we’d still be using horses for transportation. We’d all be fluent in Morse code. Our houses would be near the river so we could do our laundry every day. Most of us would agree life is better now than it was fifty years ago and better still from fifty years before that. Not only do we have modern conveniences like cars and telephones and washing machines, but Black people are no longer 3/5ths of a person, women are allowed to vote, and children are protected from unfair labor practices. Progress not only makes our lives better but our world better, too. To be sure, not everything we label as “progress” is actually progress, and we’re far from perfect, but overall, the world becomes a better place when we step out of our comfort zone and embrace what is possible.
This tendency toward comfort is dangerous for the church, too.
It’s one of the reasons why churches are shrinking and closing. We are unwilling to embrace ideas that take us out of our comfort zone. But as the world changes, we need to change with it. While the mission and the message stay the same, the way we transmit and deliver it should adapt to the world we live in. Imagine if we were literally delivering the message of God by Pony Express while the world is transmitting in 5G. That’s the danger of staying in our comfort zone. But it happens all the time. One of my friends found this out pretty quickly. He was the pastor of a small and at one time thriving church. They now inhabited a building far too big for the size of the congregation. But my friend is a person who has a passion for outreach and always has an eye for opportunities. He loves trying new and innovative ideas to bring people to Christ, but one of his parishioners complained. This person came up to my friend, his pastor, and literally said he didn’t want the church to grow. He liked it the way it was, and any new people would just mess it up. I wish this was an isolated incident, but it isn’t. Ask any pastor and they will have a story like this in their pocket. For me, it happened after giving a message about the possibilities of outreach. This guy came up to me afterward and asked how big I would want the church to grow, and I responded, “I guess as big as God wants it to grow.” And he responded, “I hope it doesn’t grow too big.” And he wasn’t a bad guy. Quite the opposite. A devoted Christian, always thinking of others, willing to give of his time, talent, and gifts. What he was saying in his own way was he was comfortable with the way things were and didn’t want that to change. And while I completely understand not wanting to lose that feeling, I hope we trust enough in God to know the difference between our discomfort and our disobedience and that we would choose the first over the second.
Psychologically and biologically there are many ways to explain this phenomenon.
But the important thing to know is we can overcome it if we choose to. By intention and discernment, we can put aside our tendency toward comfort and do what is best – for ourselves, for our community, and for the Kingdom of God. Intention – to do something with purpose by keeping our minds open to new opportunities; and discernment – to carefully examine our feelings when we resist. Otherwise, we may miss out on opportunities that can make our lives so much better – like watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. God has in store for you amazing opportunities if only we have the bravery to step forward in faith and embrace it. “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7).” Dare to live a life of discomfort; to boldly go where no one has gone before!
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolelipkin/2022/10/25/our-brains-want-to-be-lazy-heres-how-to-win-the-battle/
[2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-robinson/comfort-hazardous-to-health_b_957788.html
Craig's Corner 