Concluding the series of Things You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else (But Church), an in-person version of which I presented as a class at Christ Church Charlottesville on Sunday mornings this fall. Click here to read the intro and many caveats.
The research found that among great composers like Beethoven, a 37 percent increase in sadness led to, on average, one extra major composition.
I have read some pretty jaw-dropping entries in the Cult of Productivity playbook over the years, but that one, taken from Anthony Lane’s review of Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey’s new book How to Build a Life, sits near the top. The idea here is that negative emotions can be leveraged for personal progress. So do not despair if you’re feeling blue (or experiencing Ludwig levels of misery); even your saltiest tears can be fashioned into an offering on the altar of achievement. Phew!
To be fair, I haven’t read Brooks and Winfrey’s book. But I’m not sure one has to have done so to see the all-American absurdity in such quantification. Lane’s review is one of those periodic overviews of the self-help self-improvement self-care leadership genre that sheds a light on the deeper presumptions governing how we view ourselves these days. It reveals the outlook that generates giggle-inducing statistics like the one above. Here’s the gist:
To anyone browsing “Build the Life You Want” and books of a similar ilk, it soon becomes clear that the care and maintenance of the self is no longer a branch of the social sciences, if it ever was, or an offshoot of popular psychology. Restructuring your inward being, and increasing its turnover, is now akin to running a company. Personhood, like religion and politics, is a business.
Lane is not exaggerating. Underlying the whole schema here is an injunction to always remember: “You are your own CEO.” Oh boy.
Presumably Brooks and Winfrey did not mean for this bit of high anthropology to read like a parody of late-capitalism #seculosity. Maybe some readers feel empowered by the sentiment. Lane’s tone suggests that I’m not alone in finding it depressing. The overt dehumanization is one thing. Another is that it implies a level of agency that 1.) doesn’t exist and 2.) makes people hate themselves when their quarterly reports fall short of projections.
If you are not just a brand but a business, what does that mean when your child gets sick? When your addiction relapses? How about when your country goes to war? Moreover, how is marriage any different from a merger? What does death do for your bottom-line? And if I don’t capitalize on my sadness with any major compositions or breakthroughs, what then?
On the upside (ha!), this notion makes for the perfect introduction to the final aphorism that you won’t hear anywhere else but church, “Your Life Is None of Your Business.” I can’t believe I need to write this but the self is not a business. Your life is not one either. And even if it sometimes feels that way, you are definitely not the CEO. If anything, you’re in PR.
Worldly wisdom — an admittedly amorphous category, if anyone fits, it’s Oprah — relies on a flattering estimation of personal power. This is why its guidance invariably takes a law-like (or if-then) shape. If you do as I say, think the way I think, then you will build the life what you want to build. Here are the steps you not only should but can take toward happiness, success, etc.
At church, however, we hear about how human beings lack in power. How you and I are fundamentally in need of help, from each other and ultimately from God. Deliverance even. Our problems seldom boil down to a lack of information, but to a lack of wherewithal. We have roadmaps galore, what we lack is gasoline. “We are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little,” says Anne Lamott.
Heather Havrilesky, in a brilliant installment of her Ask Polly newsletter, went so far as to say our obsession with control lies at the root of much of our suffering:
So many of the letters I get are about control … We apply the full force of our brains to the things we can’t control until we’re obsessed, mapping out ways to bend each relationship or life circumstance or friend or relative into a shape that might bring us satisfaction and peace.
But this fixation on control is a big part of what makes most of us unhappy. We can’t control our careers, can’t control our friends, can’t control our spouses, can’t control our kids. We will never have enough money, we will always be short of beautiful, we will never be loved enough, we will never be successful and joyful. Our need for control is a dirty lens through which the whole world looks misshapen and dissatisfying.
“Your life is none of your business” is another way of saying, you don’t actually have that much control, and that’s okay. You are not at fault for everything bad that has happened to you. Nor do you deserve credit for all the good things that come your way. What you will hear at church, one hopes, is that the burden of your life is ultimately not yours to carry.
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) makes this clear from the get-go. Its first question is “What is your only comfort in life and death?” to which the Christian answers “That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” The Catechism goes on to assert that it is God’s business to preserve our life and guide our will. Every hair on our head is in his care. That is to say, just because my life is none of my own business doesn’t mean it isn’t God’s. What sounds like a negative statement is actually a liberating and reassuring one.
This means that faith often looks like trusting that the true CEO (sigh) knows what he’s doing. God has been at this far longer than you have. He has the full picture and the long view. This tends not to go down well with us control freaks, who need to know what’s going to happen and when. Yet perhaps it is also part of what Paul meant when he wrote in Romans 14, “For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” Your hope is none of your business.
In our glossary (we have a glossary!), we define the word Imputation in a couple of ways. Theologically, imputation is the idea that God reconciles sinners to himself by declaring them to be righteous on account of Christ … We are judged by God on the basis of Christ’s action and identity, which, through his death and resurrection has been imputed to us by faith, rather than on the basis of our action and identity. As one classic summary puts it, “Christ’s merits are given to us so that we might be reckoned righteous by our trust in the merits of Christ when we believe in him, as though we had merits of our own” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXI). Your goodness is none of your business.
In more everyday terms, whenever we are shown love when we do not deserve it — when we are loved by someone right in the middle of our “unlovability” — we witness the power of imputation in practice. As Todd wrote in his fantastic article the other day: “Imputation isn’t so much saying ‘You’re a great person,’ despite all evidence to the contrary, as much as ‘You matter to me no matter who you are.'” Imputation does not say I’ll love you when you change. It says I’ll love you in spite of the fact that you may never change. Your belovedness is none of your business.
“Non-contingent” is another word that might help us here. Our relationship to the God who imputes righteousness to sinners is non-contingent. Meaning, God’s disposition toward you and I is not contingent on anything we bring to the table. It is not contingent on our PR department’s ability to spin our behavior (or our sadness) effectively. Philip Yancey captures the essence of non-contingency when he writes “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less”.
This stands in stark contrast to the contingency of, well, every other relationship under the sun. Just ask Jim Lorge.
A few weeks ago on The Mockingcast we spoke about a moving NY Times story about the Minnesota Board of Pardons. The piece introduced us to Mr. Lorge, a man who had been convicted for manufacturing and selling methamphetamine in 2005. His crimes had not only disgraced, but bankrupted his family. After being released from prison, Jim got clean and began work as a drug counselor. The article details the collateral damage that he and his loved ones live with as a result of his conviction. And thus, with the help of his church, he seeks a hearing with the Board of Pardons.
“Do I have to carry this burden for the rest of my life?” Mr. Lorge, 48, asked before his hearing. “I want to be forgiven. I just want to be forgiven.” But formal forgiveness in Minnesota comes only through the pardon board.
A pardon, he said, would help him and his fiancée find better housing and allow him to volunteer at school activities involving their blended family. It would also send the encouraging message to his struggling clients that “we can change our outcomes and eventually remove the label of felon.”
Jim’s future, in that moment, is none of his business. And that is profoundly good news! After all, his track record is pretty spotty. The Board of Pardons meets, he does not get a vote, yet their decision is a happy one.
Theoretically, church is the place where that same decision is handed down, week after week. Our brand may be bankrupt, but the judgement against sin has been overturned, the condemning label has been removed, and the guilty have been shown mercy. Not 37, but 100 percent.
COMMENTS
12 responses to “Your Life Is None of Your Business”
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Fantastic—and so helpful!
Nailed it (to the cross). Thanks Dave.
Love this so much Dave! There’s a Welcoming Prayer that I learned in Spiritual Direction (which reminds me alot of AA). But in order to welcome the Holy Spirit, we have to accept our lives as they actually are, and feel our feelings as they actually are. Which is to say, we release control when we welcome the Holy Spirit. To be able to do this is the grace of imputation begeting sanctification. Anyway, it helps me alot when I’m tempted to make my life a brand. Or, ya know tell my husband to not load the dishwasher *that way* 🙂
I love that! Thank you for sharing it, Janell.
great read.
“To be fair, I haven’t read Brooks and Winfrey’s book.”
Hmmmm. It feels a bit risky to base an article on a review (by scoffer Anthony Lane no less!) of a book you haven’t read and recognize its “absurdity.”
Still, your points are well-taken. I just wish I knew how accurately they reflect the actual source material, not the opinion of The New Yorker. Maybe next time?
I loved your honesty in saying you had not read the book!
(Pretty sure your “Life is Too Short” warning system was activated.)
Thank you so much for this. It has made me cry and I don’t know why. Or maybe I do. The burden of trying to be in control, to try to avoid all the seemingly inevitable gut punches…it is a heavy burden. Thank you that you are continually “in the business” of helping to lighten our loads. I am truly grateful for having read your article this morning.
The illusion of control is pervasive. Technology has made us believe Man can control nearly all facet of existence. This article is a timely reminder of illusionary this idea truly is
So much of our suffering is due to our arrogant estimation of AUTONOMOUS CONTROL.
AMERICANS absolutely EXCELL in flawless presumption of I CAN DO; I WILL DO…and thus become a LAW unto themselves…self-will becomes RIGHT vs WRONG and BETTER or WORSE…and a measure for JUDGMENT against others.
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