"Pluses and Minuses"--September 10, 2019
"Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, 'Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions'." [Luke 14:25-33]
A handful of voices who have been important to me over the years keep telling me the same lesson in different words. My father, passing this wisdom along through my brother, quoted Teddy Roosevelt's famous dictum, "Life has compensations." Another wise voice taught me the same sentiment, but in the words, "Everything in life is a plus/minus." And the voice of my high school economics teacher started off our lessons with the principle, "There is always an opportunity cost." Each voice says to me in its own way, "Nothing in this world comes without trade-offs."
It's good, practical advice, because it reminds me, even in everyday situations, that every choice for something is also a choice against something else. And it reminds me as well that there are no options in life that are all pro with no con--every decision in your life ever has been a choice between two or more imperfect options, each with drawbacks that go along with the advantages of each.
Now, practically speaking, on the one hand that means if you find yourself in one of those "Catch-22" positions where you feel you are "damned if you do and damned if you don't" as the saying goes, there is hope. There may be downsides no matter what you pick, but there are also likely to be positive dimensions to each option in front of you--the question is simply which set of pros and cons, of pluses and minuses, you will choose to live with. Of course, the cynic in me wants to insist, too, that it also means if you think you have found something wonderful and delightful that makes the world seem like unicorns and rainbows, it is worth stopping to ask, "Wait a second--what is the minus here?" In other words, it is worth asking, "What negatives come along with this new delightful-seeming positive? What am I missing out on, or having to let go of, by choosing what I choose?" There always are some. That's how life is in this world--everything is a plus and a minus.
Yes, even following Jesus.
This is one of those lifetime struggles of the faith we have to face honestly. Jesus just lays his cards on the table and says it: following him carries costs. Following him means we no longer get to set our own itinerary, for one--that is the definition of following, after all. Following Jesus means that "going where Jesus goes" becomes the priority over "having cool stuff," or "achieving the spouse-and-2.5-kids-and-white-picket-fence-life," or even "having a respectable reputation." Jesus is just being honest with us from the outset--there are costs to following him.
I think this is hard for us, because somewhere along the way, we were told differently. We are told in America, for one, that you can have it all--the job AND the family AND the limitless free time for self-improvement, yoga, and pumpkin spice lattes while you read the latest New York Times bestseller. And not only are we told that we can have it all, we have been taught by religious voices (albeit some pretty shady ones) that Jesus is the way to getting all those things. "Let Jesus in your life," they begin their sales-pitch, "and you'll do better at work, your kids will get better grades, you'll keep (or find) the love of your life, and you'll have clearer-looking skin, too!" It's really a double-lie: it's a fake gospel that offers us the illusion of having all pluses without any minuses, all pro and no con, and that turns Jesus into a magical amulet that can grant us all those wishes.
Jesus, however, will not lie to us. And so he just tells us plainly that the struggle is real, and it is in a sense unavoidable. The options in front of us always have what look like pluses and minuses to them. And Jesus just has too much integrity to hide the costs in the fine print.
Now, we Christians have spent the better part of the last two millennia trying to find some way to make Jesus not say what he clearly expresses here. We look for loopholes, or try to find some way to let ourselves off the hook, so that Jesus "can't" mean what he seems to mean here. We look for ways to say, "Well, certainly Jesus doesn't mean I have to part with any of my possessions--this must be for someone else!" Or we try to say, "Well, maybe we would have to choose between Jesus and our closest family relationships if those other people rejected the Christian faith--but all my family go to church, so Jesus will never make me choose between him and my 2.5-kid-white-picket-fence life."
But he does all the time. He dares us to value other people more than our money, and therefore to be generous with our money so that other people can eat. He dares us to value the Kingdom more than our houses, and therefore to give our time and resources and treasures to support what God is up to in the world. He dares us to value his kind of reckless love more than our reputation as "good religious people," and therefore to intentionally associate with the folks labeled "bad and godless people," because that's where Jesus spent his time.
Now, here's the plus and minus of it all. To let go of all that list of things we find oh-so-valuable (money, cookie-cutter family, possessions, status, reputation, and yes, maybe even what had been our closest relationships) fees like loss. Absolutely. It feels like we are being asked to surrender all the creature comforts of life, and it is a real struggle to accept that Jesus actually said this. On the other hand, Jesus is only calling us to be where he already is. Jesus lost his home, his reputation, his closest relationships even, for the sake of drawing us to himself. And then Jesus lost it all--giving his life away for the world... for YOU--at the cost of his very life. There ain't nothing Jesus calls us to let go of that he hasn't already set aside, and there ain't nowhere Jesus calls us to go that he already hasn't gone through.
And when we dare to follow Jesus into all the unexpected places he takes us, we find our lives blessed in ways we could not imagine. But there is no plus without a minus, and there are no pros without cons. In this life, you get to pick which you would rather live with: a life of possessions and cookie-cutter happiness (maybe...for however long that lasts) that is too worried about losing those that we miss out on seeing Jesus, or a life that is willing to drop everything else just to be where Jesus goes. Maybe all of us in our lives do a kind of half-baked job that sometimes chooses Jesus and sometimes chooses ourselves... but Jesus keeps calling us to completely give ourselves away--and to find ourselves unexpectedly filled all over again at the same time.
Jesus never said there wasn't a cost to following him. He is just convinced that he is worth it. Shall we take him up on that dare today?
Lord Jesus, help us to give ourselves to you, regardless of the cost, so that we may be where you are, not just in some future heaven, but here and now.
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