Familiarity is a fast killer of ambition. The choice between where you are and where you want to be is a false one. Finding your own voice, making your own way, is scary. There are no guarantees. But constantly putting off your goals in exchange for the safety of those hugs and ata boys is not God’s plan for you. Your community exists to help you grow, but at some point the training wheels become stumbling blocks.
Why
do we, all of us, find it difficult to simply be
ourselves? To be simply unique, one of a kind, and to step away from the
crowd? I refuse to believe that we, as a people, lack the
creativity or inventiveness to simply be unique. I also doubt we
choose to be blades of grass, adopting the characteristics of
every other blade around us. I believe the imitative quality of
humanity is fueled by our desire to be loved. That embrace, that
pat on the back, hair tousle, ata boy. To be surrounded by
warmth and beating hearts who accept and embrace us. Most of us
simply cannot live without these things. As a result, many if
not most of us never reach the potential our lives offer,
because we are unable or unwilling to move beyond the comfort
community affords us. We become unwilling or unable to stand out
because standing out means putting those familiar and comforting
things at risk.
It amazes me how people who love us can be and often are the
first people to ridicule us when we reach beyond the familiar,
when we step outside the norm, stretching past our comfort zone.
If I said I wanted to become a ballet dancer, there’d be howls
of laughter from one end of the country to another. And that’s
what kills our dreams. Not the naysayers, not our enemies or
strangers—our loved ones. Our community. “Isn’t that the
carpenter’s son…?” Familiarity is a fast killer of ambition. We
all have ambition. What few of us have is courage. Courage
requires us to be willing to fail and to fail publicly, on a
grand scale. To risk ridicule and scorn in exchange for growth,
for learning something about ourselves.
Like food and sex, the warmth of community goes right to the
pleasure center of the brain. It is comforting, assuring. Girls
want boyfriends not so much for sex but for those fleeting
moments where he looks her in the eye the way mommy looked us in
the eyes as children. We want hand-holding—like mommy—and
constant hugs and embraces. This is why we constantly see young
girls pressed up against some useless boy you know—at a
glance—is just using her. Why women routinely stay with men who
mistreat them. They say it’s the money, it’s not. It’s the
warmth. Even disingenuous warmth—fake warmth—is worth selling
our souls for. Worth turning away from God and ignoring our true
potential.
More than wealth or power, more than the simple satisfaction of
fulfilling that which God has breathed in us, we want a hug. A
pat n the back. An ata boy. We want acceptance above all else.
But we crave that acceptance from man, from human beings. God
has already accepted us. God has already embraced us. God is
with us always, every minute of every hour of every day. Most of
us claiming to be Christians acknowledge this on an intellectual
level yet still continue to live lives unworthy of that
relationship because we crave human companionship and human
acceptance.
As children, we develop this huge laundry list of goals—
I wanna be president, I wanna be an astronaut. As we get older,
that list becomes smaller and smaller, our ambitious lower and
lower. I want to be a lawyer, I want to be an editor. Into our
mid to late twenties, the list has grown pathetic. I want to be
my section manager. I want to be on the night shift. Why? What
happened to us? We have traded in our dreams, our hopes, our
ambitions, our childlike reach-for-the-stars ambition, for the
comfort, the safety of community.
Millions of women, each and every day, when faced with a
choice between their goals and their boo, choose Boo. The
chemical reaction going on inside our brains behaves exactly
like heroin addiction. We won’t leave town because this is where
our friends, our family are. Any botanist will tell you, plants
need ultimately to be transplanted in order to grow.
Jettisoning your friends, your family, your Boo, is often the healthiest choice you can make. Reinventing
yourself, starting over, stepping out, doing the
unexpected—these are all healthy choices. Afraid you’ll be
lonely? You will be lonely. But that loneliness will force you
to learn more about yourself. You will discover things about you
you never knew, never realized, because Mama ‘Nem were always in
that space, breathing the oxygen out of the room. You will make
new friends but these friends will be different. These friends
won’t occupy spaces that inhibit your growth. The formula will
be different and the rhythms will change. You will grow. You
will discover.
Discussing Elisha’s choice to follow Elijah, Matthew Henry put
it this way:
Elijah found Elisha by Divine direction,
not in the schools of the prophets, but in the field; not
reading, or praying, or sacrificing, but plowing. Idleness is no
man's honour, nor is husbandry any man's disgrace. An honest
calling in the world does not put us out of the way of our
heavenly calling, any more than it did Elisha. His heart was
touched by the Holy Spirit, and he was ready to leave all to
attend Elijah.
It is in a day of power that Christ's
subjects are made willing;
nor would any come to Christ unless they were thus drawn. It was
a discouraging time for prophets to set out in. A man that had
consulted with flesh and blood, would not be fond of Elijah's
mantle; yet Elisha cheerfully leaves all to accompany him. When
the Saviour said to one and to another, Follow me, the dearest
friends and most profitable occupations were cheerfully left,
and the most arduous duties done from love to his name. May we,
in like manner, feel the energy of his grace working in us
mightily, and by unreserved submission at once, may we make our
calling and election sure. —1 Kings 19 Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on
the Bible
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to
Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent,
and believe in the good news.” 16 As Jesus passed along the Sea
of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net
into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them,
“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18 And
immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went
a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother
John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he
called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with
the hired men, and followed him. —Mark 1:14-20
Immediately. They left immediately. Fishing was the common
method of earning a living along the costal towns. Leaving their
work had real consequences, posed a real threat, to themselves
and their families. This Man was a complete and total stranger,
one Who made them no financial promises, paid them no stipend.
The broader implication of this text is these fishermen were
ridiculed, laughed at, derided by their wives, by family and
loved ones. They dropped their nets and walked off the job to
follow this Man, this Man Who likely did not have a dime in His
pocket, and Who did not concern Himself about things like rent
and car notes, food and shelter.
I often find myself shaking my head
at the decisions people
make: gifted, amazing people, who choose not to use those gifts,
who talk all this yang but who, year after year after year after
year after year sit in the same emotional and intellectual
space, cradled within their community—whatever that might be—and
who do nothing, achieve nothing, who do not grow.
Why? Because these folks are cradled within the bosom of
community—of Mama ‘Nem. Of their Church Folk relationships. Of
their pastor who not only does not encourage them to grow but,
in many cases, actively works against growth because the pastor
needs key people to remain in important positions so his
thing—the church on the corner—can function. They will not
learn, will not grow because they are addicted to hugs, to back
pats, to ata boys. The prospect of life without a cookie—comfort
food—is daunting. And, facing a choice between our community and
our ambition beyond it, most of us choose our community. We stay
put. We imitate that atmosphere. We become what is the
acceptable and normal good. And we never reach our potential.
The choice between where you are and where you want to be is a
false one. So many of us stay in bad relationships, toxic
relationships, because we fear being alone. We claim to know
God, to believe in Jesus, many of us to be “Holy Ghost Filled,”
but we still behave like codependents: like people addicted to
people. To flesh. Not in a sensual way but addicted to the
warmth of the family huddle. But, you know what? When you sit
with people who have moved beyond this bondage—and that’s
precisely what this is, bondage—they will tell you: having
journeyed out on their own, many folks discover upon returning
to the family or community that the warmth and love is still
there, but they themselves have emotionally, philosophically and
intellectually moved on. Coming home to visit, to engage in that
love is always good, but they are no longer slaves to it, no
longer addicted to it. They cannot imagine giving up the life
they now live in exchange for becoming an infantilized and
limited junior member of a community that loves yet nonetheless
dismisses them.
Finding your own voice, making your own way, is scary. There are
no guarantees. But constantly putting off your goals in exchange
for the safety of those hugs and ata boys is not God’s plan for
you. Your community exists to help you grow, but at some point
the training wheels become stumbling blocks.
Christopher J. Priest
10 April 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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