"Buyer's Remorse"--August 26, 2019
[Jesus said:] "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on findng one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it." [Matthew 13:45-46]
You can't not spend your life. The question is what (or whom) we will spend our lives on... and whether it will have been worth it when all our minutes are cashed in.
So, what's worth going all in for in this life?
Let me offer a true story by way of example, from just last week. My son's birthday was just a week ago, and like any eight-year-old who has just gotten his finances boosted with some birthday cards from family and friends, he had money burning a hole in his pocket. He begged me to let him go to Wal-Mart on a day last week so he could buy something with his birthday money. We went.
There in the toy aisle, I offered the advice (unsolicited, I'll admit) that he didn't have to spend all the money he had gotten for his birthday at once, and that it would probably be a very good idea to spend some and save some. But eight year olds know everything, and they certainly know that saving money doesn't sound like very much... you know, fun. He found a toy that was sort of like a treasure hunt. You opened up little compartments, and each compartment might have a key or a gold-colored-plastic "treasure" or a booby trap or a lever to open the next compartment, until you had opened up all thirty little compartments and gotten the final trinket at the end--also made of gold-colored plastic. It was a clever design, except for the fact that it was obviously the sort of toy you could really only "enjoy" once, becuase once you have opened up the compartments and found each of the successive next steps in the treasure hunt, the novelty wore off.
Now, I could see that design flaw even while the toy was in the packaging and on the shelf. And, again, without having been invited to give my opinion, I did anyway--this toy, which would have cost my son all his birthday nest-egg, was not going to be fun any more by the next day. I warned my son, "If you buy this, which you can do because it is your money, I fear that the fun of this toy will have worn off and you will regret having spent it on this, instead of some other thing that comes along later that you can't even think of yet." I was hoping this was the chance for a lesson in "opportunity cost," so that he might learn that spending your money on one thing costs you not only the dollars out of your wallet, but also all the other things you didn't buy but could have. I was hoping this was a chance for him to trust me that maybe it was better not to spend all that he had on something that would be at best an afternoon's entertainment, but would have no lasting value.
I was wrong.
What can a parent do in a moment like that? In the big picture, I am convinced my job as a parent is to prepare my kids to be decent, mature, wise humans, and it seems to me that sometimes the best teacher is experience rather than a parental veto. After all, if I forbade him from spending his money on the treasure hunt toy, he would have continued to insist that it would never have lost its appeal, and I would have been forever the bad guy who kept him from the One Thing That Could Make Him Happy. But if I let him buy it (it was his own money after all), and he learned for himself that it was a waste, yeah, he'd be out of cash for the foreseeable future, but he might be a bit wiser.
Well, I hate playing the role of Cassandra, the figure from Greek myth who could predict the future with the catch that no one would believe her, but just as I feared, he bought the toy, tore through it as soon as he got home, and by the end of the same day, was moping around the house lamenting over the other toys on the shelf he could have had that would still be fun. I don't mean to be an "I told you so" kind of dad, but... well, I did tell him so.
But I have been thinking since that day last week about the ways we do the same thing with the commodities we have that are yet more precious than birthday money in an eight-year-old's wallet: our time, our attention, and our love. And it occurs to me that there is no option in this life of not spending your time. You will give it away to something, to someone, or (more likely) to several somethings and someones, each of whom compete for as large a slice of the pie from you as they can get. This is unavoidable--it is just the nature of living in linear time. You and I get twenty-four hours in a day, accompanies by only so much energy, only so much attention we can give, and only so much face-time we can devote to the people around us. The question, then, is what we spend them on.
And my concern, not just about myself or my son, but all of us, is how often we make the impulse choice to spend our time, our attention, and our energy only on what is entertaining or appealing for the moment. We have all been that eight-year-old kid in the toy department of Wal-Mart, convinced that the new shiny thing on the shelf will surely keep its allure for us, forgetting the opportunity cost that the time and energy and love we spend acquiring the "new shiny thing" costs us in the time we cannot devote to the other needs, people, and things that are in our lives.
Sometimes the impulse buys are obvious: the cliche case of the guy in a midlife crisis who spends a large chunk of money on the new sports car, and then has to spend extra time at work making enough money to keep making the payments, and spends all his free time buffing and waxing it. He forgets that the cost of the car isn't just the sticker price--it is all the hours he is now obligated to working for and caring for the car, hours which could have been spent with the people who matter to him, or being available to help someone else who needed him. It's not that sports cars are sinful--it's just that the price is a lot higher than anybody calculates at first.
Sometimes it's a piece of technology, and we might even convince ourselves that the technology makes it possible for us to connect with a whole new group of people. But that, too, carries and opportunity cost. It's not just the price of an iPhone or an Android that you have think about--it's the way the time we choose to spend texting, Instagramming, Facebooking, and Tweeting on the device is therefore time we cannot spend with the people who are already in our lives, who might need your listening ear or might be seeking your wisdom. But the more people see us buried in the screens of our little rectangles of technology, the more they will assume we are not available to have those conversations. My purchase of a piece of technology carries a cost that ripples out ot the other people around me who won't even bother trying to get my attention after enough time, because they can see I have not made them a priority. It's not that the smart phone or tablet or whatever is wicked--it's just that it carries a hidden opportunity cost.
Sometimes it's even just the ways we choose to use our time, rather than "stuff." I was talking with someone not long ago who has gotten into a new trend of going to more movies, more social outings, more nights out at the bar lately, moreso than they had in a long time, and my friend was oblvious to the ways it was already affecting their relationships with their family, their church, and their other friends. They couldn't see how their grown sibling weren't trying to get together as much, becuase they had simply stopped trying to make offers that were going to be shrugged off. They couldn't see how folks were not asking them to help out with this or that volunteer opporutnity, becuase the message was already being communicated in the busyness of their social calendar, "I'm not available for you--I've got other stuff to do now." My friend couldn't see the connection between their own new-found full social calendar and the ways others felt less connected. Because, rather like an eight-year-old at Wal-Mart, they couldn't see the opportunity cost of the choices they made. And yeah, there's nothing wicked or evil or morally wrong per se about movies or restaurants or even nights at the bar (I'm a Lutheran--that's OK with us); it's simply a matter of the unseen cost of what we do not give our attention, time, or energy to by the choices we make.
And like my son's purchase, so often the real shame of those choices is that we pick something for the moment that will lose its allure before long, rather than considering what will have staying power. "But it's fun right now!" is the motto of countless consumers who get buyer's remorse before long, whether we are talking about what we spend our money on, what we spend our time on, or what we give our love to. And while, "I'm just having a good time--what's the harm in that?" may seem like a good enough justification for our choices when we are children, that just doesn't seem to hold water when it is time to put away childish things.
So where does that leave us? Well, it begs the question we started with: what, when all is said and done, will have been worth spending your time, your resources, your love, and your attention on? Becasue there's no just saving it up forever. Your minutes tick down with every day, and mine are ticking away right along. But in the end, just about everything in life will be some kind of a letdown... except, Jesus says, for the Reign of God. What Matthew's Gospel calls "the kingdom of heaven," which is another way of saying, "the beloved community where God's mercy and justice are lived out," is the one thing that is worth spending your life on and giving your life away for. Not merely in the sense of "one day when I die I'll get to go to heaven," but in the sense right now of living in such a way that even our free moments are available so that we can be there to help a neighbor, to listen to a friend, to comfort a relative, or to serve a stranger. That's worth it in a way that no treasure-hunt plastic toy, no sports car, no rectangle of technology, and no nights out at the movies can match. The choice to keep ourselves free--and available for the need of someone else--won't let us down, because it is the life most in tune with the very heart of God.
That's why Jesus is convinced that living the Kingdom life--a life devoted to and shaped by the character of our generous and gracious God--is worth spending all we have for. It will cost us everything, but give us the thing we have been truly striving after. Like Bonhoeffer so famously put it, the Kingdom life is a life of "costly grace"--"costly" becuase it will require the surrender of all of our lives from our work week to our free Saturday evenings--but grace becuase it gives us the only true life there is. Ultimately everything else in life loses its sparkle: the toys we buy in childhood, the status symbols we acquire in adulthood, the reputation we work hard to build up in our community, the vacations and travels we take, and even the momentary sparkle of a new romance or a full dance card. And the reason they all eventually leave us empty is that they are all trying the same misguided tactic of trying to entertain or delight us, rather than letting us give ourselves away.
If Jesus is right that the only life worth living is the life you give away, then all of our other quests to "fill" the empty spaces in our lives are wrong-headed from the start. In the end, it's not that we should stop filling our lives with toys and instead start filling them with cars or technology. It's not that I should stop filling my calendar with nights at the bar only to trade it off for filling my calendar with nights at the movies. It's that the underlying logic of "filling" our lives is always going to leave us unsatisfied, when the real sense of fulfillment in life comes from the opposite direction--of giving ourselves away. That's why the pearl of the kingdom is worth selling all you have to acquire it. That's what makes Jesus different from all the other things, people, relationships, and stuff we try and amuse ourselves with or "just have a good time with."
I have been thinking a lot since last week about the sight of my son standing in the toy aisle, contemplating what to do with his birthday windfall. And at least for this moment of clarity, I recognize how I am him every day, having to make the difficult choices about what to spend my minutes, my attention, my love, and my resources on. Some days I don't do half bad... and sometimes I fall back into the same trap as a second-grader convinced he has to spend it all on something that feels fun for the moment but will ultimately not last.
So... with a new day before us, what will you and I spend this day's love, time, attention, and energy on? Who is worthy of your minutes? And how can you and I both give ourselves away?
Lord Jesus, give us the courage and compassion to live our lives giving ourselves away, rather than striving to fill ourselves up. Let us seek first your Kingdom, and find our fulfillment in the people you bring into our lives that way.
