Barry's Blog

I think it was Tolstoy who observed, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." If you are like me, change is not something one embraces so naturally. And while we are constantly confronted with "performance" in our culture (bonus incentives, performance reviews, an investment vehicle's year-to-date performance, etc.), there is another kind of "checkup" that is worth considering. I'm referring to  a "heart" checkup. A few years ago, best-sellling author Phillip Yancey wrote of a spiritual checkup that he scheduled, conducted in part with a silent retreat for a number of days (led by a spiritual director, no less). After the retreat, Yancey observed, "In those days of silence and solitude, I paid attention to what might need to change in order to keep my soul in shape. The more I listened, the longer the list grew." Of the list Yancey came up with, we'll here consider five of the takeaways he came up with, kind of a "spiritual action plan" for the next fifty years.

First, "Come to God with your own troubles, as well as the world's." Yancey confesses that he needed to find a better balance between the need for personal serenity and a proper concern about global hunger, injustice, and other issues. "I look at the example of Jesus, who surely cared about similar matters while on earth. As he said to the anxiety-prone, 'Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.'"

Second, "Question your doubts as much as your faith." Many people, particularly Christians, struggle with their doubts, sometimes about God's existence, His character, etc. Yet we need to remember that doubts are not such a bad thing. Frederick Buechner has observed that doubts are like "ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving!" Yancey admits that, "by personality, or perhaps my fundamentalist past, I brood on doubts and experience faith in occasional flashes. Isn't it about time for me to reverse the pattern?"

Third, "Do not attempt this journey alone. Find companions who see you as a pilgrim, even a straggler, and not as a guide." Yancey, like many Protestants, confesses that he suffers a serious case of Lone Ranger Christianity - trying to do it alone. Yet the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, tells the story of the people of God, and even the epistles of the New Testament address communities of faith. Yancey observes, "We have little guidance on how to live as a follower alone because God never intended it." 

Fourth, "Allow the good - natural beauty, your health, encouraging words - to penetrate as deeply as the bad." As a writer, Yancey laments, "Why does it take seventeen encouraging letters from readers to overcome the effect of one that is caustic and critical? If I awoke every morning, and fell asleep each night, bathed in a sense of gratitude and not self-doubt, the in-between hours would doubtless take on a different cast."

Fifth, "For your own sake, simplify. Eliminate whatever distracts you from God." Needless to say, in a culture steeped in diversions (Pascal would say this is so we won't be reminded of our unhappiness!), this one is HUGE. Among the things Yancey mentions, he suggests that we adopt a "ruthless winnowing of mail, and giving catalogs, junk mail, and book (and video?) club notices no more time than it takes to toss them in the trash." His last sentence? "If I ever get the nerve, my television set should probably land there as well." But what in the world, might I ask, would we do with our leisure if we didn't have television?

Worth pondering,

Barry Morrow 

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