The Cure for the Common Complacency
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
We all reach times when we slow down, not to observe sabbath so that we know God is God, but where we lose some of our energy and zeal. It happens to people. It happens to groups.
The reasons can be varied: distraction, being comfortable, thinking “we’ve arrived”, fatigue, disillusionment, uncertainty, and on and on. Sometimes this occurrence coincides with a desert experience or sojourn.
I’m not passing judgment on the experience of complacency because the causes can be so varied. The reasons which are more willful and self-centered ought to receive a different rebuke than those brought on by circumstances that happen to a person or group. I also believe that there is a complacency that occurs within a particular stage of the spiritual journey, which you may recognize if you’ve been traveling over this part of the trail.
Sometimes a person or group has been zealous because of fear, guilt, coercion, desperation, manipulation, or legalism. I could probably say “and/or” for all of those because these motivators are usually found together. Many of us are familiar with these driving forces. We were made afraid of missing out on heaven, losing our salvation, or not doing enough. Perhaps our loyalties were wedded to an organization and there were constant calls to build up and sustain the institution, and we felt obligated to do that. Sometimes we were doing that for our own sakes. Perhaps we’ve even been zealous in order to feel good about ourselves.
Personally I find these motivators incompatible, not complementary, with acting out of love and for love -- the love of God and our neighbor. However, they are used so frequently in churches because it is easier to get quick results from fear rather than love. I can make someone afraid (until they figure out that I am wrong) faster than they can be won to love. All the negative motivators have a quick effect but a short lifespan. Love comes slowly, but is eternal.
The reason I think that there is a part of the spiritual walk that includes complacency is that when people have been driven by negative motivators, and then discover the lie behind them, if they don’t just leave faith altogether (and some do out of disgust for how they’ve been manipulated), they tend to stop doing in the harried way they used to live. They breathe a sigh of relief. They’ve learned enough of God’s love to not be manipulated anymore. No longer forced to follow, we all tend to get a little complacent. We enjoy not “having to do” anymore and explore the possibilities of no fear-imposed boundaries. When the fences are taken down, pure curiosity leads us to explore the wider expanses. We can all recognize the adolescent behavior in this, but sometimes we go through an adolescent spiritual stage.
The new-found freedom inevitably leads to some abuse (which is why some would deny us any freedom because they think they can prevent laxness and complacency, moral or otherwise). Legalism is always driven by the belief that love isn’t enough, that love is too soft; that people will take advantage of love, but harshness will keep everyone on the straight and narrow. Of course, legalism is typically patronizing - the legalist believing that they have to keep the fences up for everyone else, more than for themselves. But harshness saps our spirits and leads to a desert of disillusionment, if not total abandonment of faith. Love is what reinvigorates dry souls.
So . . . the cure for the common complacency in an individual or group is to be invigorated by the story of God’s love. Once the fences are gone and we are no longer boxed in, we have to ultimately discover if there is anything drawing us to be where we are spiritually, or to go somewhere farther. Do I “do” because I am constrained by fear or by love? Given a wide open world do I choose in love to center myself on God? Do I in essence “fence myself” when necessary, finding that my true desire is a love for God that has won my heart and captured my imagination?
I am not suggesting that when we are in a complacent place spiritually that we don’t love God. In fact we have probably discovered that God loves us in ways we didn’t understand when we lived in abject fear and acted out of obligation. However, our love hasn’t grown beyond appreciation to motivation and imitation. Perhaps we also haven’t caught the vision of being loved not only individually, but in God’s love for the whole world. A world-loving God loves us in the context of a bigger purpose, and learning to share that love means being motivated to encounter the world of God’s love in new ways. Godlike love will move us to act as God’s love has made God a constant participant in the history of the world he created.
