The Problem With Our Problems
I’ve felt it lately: the undercurrent of anxiety and irritation running through my day. There are days when I start believing everything is a personal attack. Suddenly, everyone else is the problem and I’m justified in my reactions.
I’m not alone in feeling distracted or in my anger toward others over what is truly MY issue. Like Martha getting frustrated at her sister (and Jesus!) when the actual Messiah was sitting in her living room, I so quickly forget what matters most. The problem with our problems is they’ve ALL become a BIG deal.
If I’m honest, even when life isn’t throwing distractions my way, I go looking for them. They can be found in many places, but the most obvious example is my phone…this tiny device that holds countless, time-consuming “nothings” that I’ve started believing I can’t live without.
In C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, the senior demon, encourages his nephew, Wormwood, to use pleasure and distraction to keep his “patient” from growing in his faith. He says that “nothing” is “…strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them…in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.”
In case you zoned out, read that quote again. This “nothing” is probably the greatest threat to our ability to function the way we were made to: in community, free of constant comparison, observing rhythms of solitude, rest, work, play, and ultimately abiding in the presence of the ONE who matters most.
Whether your problems are external or the result of your own habits, put your name in place of Martha in this verse and consider how you could choose the “good portion,” which is Christ: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
We don’t know how Martha responded to Jesus’ gentle rebuke. If she was humble, conviction led to repentance. But if she was prideful (because her identity was being threatened), that sense of personal attack led to resentment. In that case, the problem with our problems is they hold us hostage.
In C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce (can you tell who my favorite author is?), there is a ghost-man who arrives at the gate of heaven with a lying lizard attached to his shoulder. When an angel tells him he can’t enter heaven with the lizard, the ghost claims he can control it (which we quickly see isn’t true). The angel offers to kill it, but the ghost makes all sorts of excuses while the lizard frantically promises to be good. The ghost says the angel’s presence is already burning him, and that he is afraid that if the lizard dies, he will too. The angel admits, “I never said it wouldn’t hurt you. I said it wouldn’t kill you.” He finally relents and as the angel breaks the lizard’s back, the ghost cries out in anguish. But then, free of the lizard, he rapidly changes into a new creation, free and glorious, as he was made to be.
The rich young ruler had a lizard of his own; a mob boss of wealth that said he could not live without his possessions. Jesus said, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” What if the young ruler had said yes even in the face of his fear? If he would have allowed Jesus to kill his false god, he would have become a pillar of the church!
So what about you? What about me? What first-world problem (or blessing) is calling the shots? We were made to worship Jesus, and we will live in that tension as long as we honor anything other than Him as Lord. The next time the lizard starts whispering or you find yourself overwhelmed by distraction, ask God to help. Not only can He solve our first-world problems, He also delights to remove the barriers that keep us from Him.
