Abandoning the Pursuit of Happiness

Notes from the Pastor...

I was told by a professor in undergrad there are two initiatives central to economics:
1) what will it cost me? and
2) how will it benefit me?
These two initiatives, questions really, articulate our human condition; so basic within humanity, they are the result of creation, the curse of Adam, the residual of evolution, or all three.  When I take up the discipline of self-examination, a practice encouraged through the 40 days of Lent, I find these two ideas central to most everything I do.  Moreover, unless we dilute ourselves into believing a distortion of reality, the same honest confession must be made by all.

Think about it.  How many life decisions have you made based on these two initiatives?  Your vocation…?  Where you live…?  What church you attend…?

As we walk into our congregational identity as  an open, inclusive, Christ-centered family of faith, these two initiatives may find vocal resonance through the disruption of the status quo.  Some may find the cost to benefit ratio too high on the cost side.  Others may see our  family of faith as the benefit long desired.  Yet when you investigate the call of discipleship in Christ, you discover these initiatives are truly limp and powerless.

Considering the first initiative, “what will it cost me?”, you are confronted with the countless statements of Jesus saying, “Those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” We churched people run to the eternal when acknowledging the second initiative, “how will it benefit me?”, and rightfully so, for the implications are grave and the benefits, perhaps, celestial.  Nonetheless, what benefit do we find in denying self and taking up the cross in this life?

American society is founded on the economics of “what will it cost me?” and “how will it benefit me?”  We call it the pursuit of happiness.  But the church, the body of Christ, is the place we find relief from the pursuit of happiness.  When the church gathers for corporate worship we come from different generations, backgrounds, and affluences to repent and believe.  What we are turning away from pales in comparison to who we are turning toward, and the one we turn toward is Christ.  With no regard to cost, and no care for benefit, Christ loved creation to the extreme; in Jesus’ work of worship, not even the cross was too difficult to bear.  

So the question now becomes: what will it be for you and me?  What will it be for First Christian Church Ruidoso?  Will the limp and powerless initiatives distort our discipleship into something less than self-sacrifice?  Will the pursuit of happiness dilute our worship into something less than work?  Will we extend effort to the healing of hopelessness in our community or be content basking in the hopelessness healed within ourselves?  Are we going to be  an open, inclusive, Christ-centered family of faith?


Grace,
Pastor Ryan