Reconsidering Our Horcruxes--September 2, 2022

Reconsidering Our Horcruxes--September 2, 2022

"I want you to be free from anxieties.  The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the things of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord." [1 Corinthians 7:32-35]

Look, there are only so many ways we can divide ourselves up before we feel like we are coming apart at the seams.  And one of the most important discoveries we make in life is when we realize that the many things that compete for our attention, love, and time may well be good things... but we cannot pursue them all, or else we'll find ourselves ripped apart as we let those good things pull us opposite directions at the same time.  To hear Paul tell it, even good things like the human companionship we call "marriage" can become another one of those powerful forces that doesn't always pull in the same direction as other good things we want to pursue in life.  And knowing which things are worth setting our lives on and giving our energy to pursue is better, ultimately, that trying to chase after it all and coming undone in the process.

I know that Paul's perspective here seems odd to a lot of our ears, especially if you've grown up hearing the conventional wisdom of Respectable Religious People that all "good" Christians are supposed to settle down, get married, raise kids, and contribute to the Gross Domestic Product for the good of the economy.  And I know, too, that we can make the mistake of hearing Paul's advice against getting married and mishear it as primarily a warning that sex is inherently sinful [which is actually what a lot of medieval church teachers and theologians taught people to believe, incorrectly, mind you].  But Paul's concern is not that the physical intimacy that comes with marriage is bad or wicked in and of itself--but rather that important relationships in our lives sometimes end up in competition for our time, attention, and energy. And that really can be difficult if we also see ourselves as completely devoted to following Jesus.

This is one of those realities we don't often talk about in contemporary American church life, but it's another elephant in the room.  To spend almost any time at all reading the gospels, you find Jesus constantly daring his followers to sell their possessions, let go of their reputations, and even put their family obligations a distant second behind going out and following him.  And yet, anybody who has cared for a family knows that you need money to put food on the table and clothes on their backs.  It's hard to really tell people you are available to help them or be there for them, if you also know you have to do grocery shopping, soccer practice, homework help, and a household's worth of laundry, right?  And a spouse is rightfully going to expect to be at the top of your list for attention, time, and dedication--but how does that fit when we also are called to give Jesus our whole selves and to love God with our fullest heart, mind, and strength?  Paul isn't trying to be a jerk or a Debbie Downer here as he talks about the "distress" or "anxiety" that comes in marriage and family--he just knows that those relationships bring obligations with them that we cannot just shirk when it gets hard.  And if we have also dedicated our lives to Jesus, sometimes it is really difficult discerning how to spend our time, our energy, and our love. We can end up feeling like the pieces of our lives are getting pulled apart at the seams.

In the fictional world of the Harry Potter novels, one of the absolute worst kinds of dark magic is something oddly similar--it's a magical artifact called a "horcrux," in which you can divide up a piece of your soul and place the piece you've cut up into it.  Just a single horcrux is an abominable idea in the world of Harry Potter, but then it turns out that the chief villain of the books has split his soul into at least seven pieces! It's a dramatic image to consider that splitting ourselves into pieces could end up making us into something monstrous.  And of course, Paul isn't quite so dramatic--he doesn't foresee people becoming evil wizards bent on world domination because they got married.  But his concern is real nevertheless--if you make the commitment that marriage [and family] entails, you are promising to dedicate your time and attention to the needs of your spouse.  Even if there were no other competing parts of your life [you know, like jobs, kids, home maintenance, and the day to day routines], it can feel like you are forced to choose between giving time and energy to the needs of a spouse or family and your own list of things to be done.  Anybody who has come home tired from a long day of work and then realized they had a list of chores at home, only to be exhausted when the list is done for the day, knows that sometimes it can feel like we end up giving God the crumbs of our lives rather than top priority--or that giving energy to serving God can feel like it means cheating our kids or spouses out of time we could have given them.  And in our most desperate moments, it really can feel like we have split our souls and feel a little less alive when we are pulled in different directions attending to each of them.

Look, setting aside the fictional sinister magic of a "horcrux," we are pressured daily to divide ourselves up into fragments and give our allegiances out to all the different stakeholders who get a piece of us.  We don't have to do sorcery to split our souls--we just have to accept the premise we've been given that one chunk of our energy and time goes to our jobs [which we have to do with utmost excellence to impress them and help the bottom line], and then another chunk has to be given to our spouses and/or children [who insist, rightfully, on being at least as important as our jobs], and then another piece to our hobbies, leisure, and self-care, while another fraction goes to our national loyalty and patriotism, and then on down the line for all the others who insist they get some claim on us.  Oh--and I guess, God gets whatever is left.  We do this all the time, and so it's no surprise that for a lot of folks, their faith feels like it is one more obligation keeping them from more pressing commitments to the PTA, football practice, laundry, and professional development.  When that happens, not only do we end up giving God the last and the leftover of our selves, but we miss out on being renewed and recharged by God... because we've turned the God piece of our lives into one more piece of drudgery.  And if we end up feeling like we have to shoehorn our faith into that mix as "one more thing" competing for our limited time, we are going to end up bitter and resentful, along with feeling utterly exhausted.

If you've ever been in that place of feeling empty and like all the parts of your life were pulling you in different directions and stretching you beyond repair, then I'll bet you can at least understand at some level why Paul takes the position he does here.  He's not anti-marriage, or anti-kids, or anti-job.  But maybe he knows what it's like to see folks feeling spent and disconnected, and he wants us at least to think before we sign up for more commitments in our lives that will add more tension and pull us in another direction to add to the list we've already got. In a culture that keeps insisting to us that we can have it all--the career, the romance, the kids, the fulfillment, and everything else, all the time--maybe we need the realism of Paul's perspective more than we admit.  There's just only so much of any one of us to go around; it's worth being really careful how we start carving up pieces of ourselves and what we give those pieces away for.

So please, hear me out: I'm not here to tell anybody that they should or should not get married.  I don't have that kind of power anyway, and to be perfectly honest, usually people come to the preacher after they've already made up their minds, set the date, and booked a DJ for a reception--so I'm not really in a position to tell people they can't or shouldn't get married, accept a job, have kids, or any other big life commitment.  None of those are within my authority to dictate; I shall not pretend otherwise.  What I do think Paul's insight here can do for us is to make us ask a question that might never have occurred to us otherwise, especially in a culture that sells us the lie that we can have it all and chase every dream all at once without being pulled apart.  Paul challenges us to ask, "To what and to whom am I already committed to giving myself... and how many other directions can I wisely allow myself to be pulled in?" Our answers may not mean we change our plans about a relationship, call off a wedding, or quit our jobs--but it might compel us to notice where we've been carving our souls up into smaller and smaller pieces.  It might make us hold off on choosing one more commitment we cannot honestly keep, so that we can do the things we are already committed to well and wisely.  It might mean we have to re-examine how we see our faith, too--and if we've let it become one small fragment of our lives, rather than whole fabric out of which everything else is woven, to change that, too.

Today, where are the places you are feeling pulled apart--and how did you get to that point?  As scary as it might be to face that question, answering it truthfully might make us more fully alive--and whole again.

Lord God, make us whole as you lead us in all the other directions of our lives.  Let us choose wisely where to give pieces of our hearts, and keep us from being pulled apart.