Sean Johnson - Intentionally - The Education of Sean Johnson

Perhaps the only thing scarier than knowing that your life must change is to start changing.

For the last few weeks, Michelle and I have been seemingly inundated with subtle and not-so-subtle hints that something about our lives needs to change. The veil of smoke that I talk so often about seems to have lifted permanently, and we now look at our lives quite a bit differently.

We’re under 30 and we’re part of the top .0001% richest people in the world. We don’t buy a lot of things, but we get to do whatever we want pretty much whenever we want. We get to go on three week vacations to South America, eat out at fancy restaurants in the city. We can buy Christmas presents for our family and not worry about whether we can cover the bill. We have no credit card debt and save about a third of what we make. By all indications we’re doing well.

We spend time with our family and friends. We work hard at our jobs - she’s become an expert in her field already, and I have the job I was told would take 15 years to attain in college. We go to church and participate in a Bible study. We exercise fairly regularly. We read all the time. We’re basically living the life we talked about when we first started dating.

Up until a month ago I would have considered us to be living the perfect life. But then God messed everything up.

Not everyone believes in God or Christianity, and that’s fine. For them, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the above. But I’ve started to realize that there is something wrong with the above if you are a Christian. Trouble is, almost no one tells you that.

We’re told that we’re supposed to say a prayer and then we get to go to heaven. We’re told that we’re supposed to find nice husbands and wives and have nice, pleasant children together. We’re told that we should give 10% of what we make to the church or some charitable organization, but that the other 90% is all ours to do as we wish, even if that means buying an enormous house and five cars. We’re told that while there are terrible things going on in other parts of the world, there’s nothing we can realistically do other than write checks or pray about it. We’re told that America is God’s country, and when we go and blow people up in God’s name it’s a righteous thing to do.

Again, if you aren’t from my background some or all of that may sound foreign or silly or scary to you. If you did grow up like me, a lot of that sounds familiar.

The problem is that I think it might all be wrong.

I think that there’s a chance that we’ve become “selective hearers”, taking the parts of the Gospel we like, ignoring the parts that we don’t.

I think that there’s a chance Jesus wasn’t speaking in hyperbole when he said that for the rich man to be saved he had to give up everything he had and give it to the poor. I think he might have actually meant it when he said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

I think he might have been serious when he said that the last will be first and the first will be last, which puts me in a pretty bad spot.

I think he might have actually meant it when he said that when you clothed the naked and fed the hungry you were clothing and feeding him….and that by not doing those things you were leaving him hungry and naked.

I think he probably serious when he asked why people call him “Lord, Lord” but then didn’t do what he said.

I think that he would be shocked to see my closet full of clothes when he told us that if we have two coats we should give one to the person who needs it.

I think he meant what he said when he suggested that the Kingdom of Heaven isn’t something that happens when you die, but also begins right here on Earth. I also think that, given how he talked and spent his time, that such a kingdom probably isn’t in large church buildings in the suburbs, but rather in homeless shelters, in elderly homes, in the urban areas of America and the destitute places around the world. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur.

I think that Christ would probably have looked at 21st century America and thought it eerily similar to the Roman Empire, with it’s idea that peace is brought by conquest and that loyalty to the state is the most important thing in the world.

I think he would be shocked to see how Christians wave their flags and shout about killing in the name of God. I think he would wonder how we could have taken what he said about peace and love and reconciliation and turned it into war and revenge and retaliation.

I think he would wonder how we could sit in church and watch some video about African children dying because they lack drinking water, produced by an organization desperately hoping to wake us up, only to find us forget immediately as we leave the service and hop back into our SUVs on our way to brunch.

I think he would look at his church and weep. I think he looks at me and weeps. No wonder so many people think Christianity isn’t attractive - who wants to join a bunch of people who ignore what we claim we believe?

For the first time, my wife and I are looking at a world that is truly broken, and wondering if the way we’re living our lives makes sense in that context. We’re wondering what God plan is for us, given our unique skills, occupying this unique place in time. We’re wondering if there aren’t better ways for us to use our money and free time. We’re wondering what all of this means in the context of our work, entertainment, family, friends.

A lot of larger decisions are way too scary to consider right now. But we have made some small decisions that we’re just starting to explore.

We’re trying to take our commitment to preserving God’s creation seriously. We’re turning our computers off when we’re not using them and running them on the lowest brightness setting when we are. We’re turning off lights we aren’t using and buying energy efficient bulbs. We’re not running the heater (or the AC whenever summer actually arrives). We’re trying to figure out whether it makes sense to have Netflix send us a DVD from 1000 miles away when we have the Internet right in front of us. Or a book. We’re looking into carbon offsets.

I’ve started working from home more often rather than traveling to Evanston just so I can be around people. When it gets warmer, I’m thinking about taking the bike out as an alternative.

We’re going through our closets to see what clothing we can get rid of. We’re looking at our bookshelves to see if there are books that we don’t need that others could use.

We’re going to try and break the bottled water habit. We’re starting to buy only fair trade coffee, or organic tea. We’ve started trying to cut down on the amount of meat we eat, and have started cooking vegetarian recipes. We’re thinking about growing herbs in our back porch.

We’re starting to donate to Living Water international to help dig deep water wells. We’re going to start making meals for the local homeless shelter. We’re considering getting involved in the homeless ministry at our church.

Long term, we’re talking about how we can organize our lives around what God truly finds important. We’re talking about how to get involved in our community instead of moving away from it. We’re talking about what our buying habits should be given the heartbreaking need all around us. We’re talking about how we should approach investing and what constitutes responsible saving versus hoarding, keeping in mind Christ’s desire to live on what you need and use the rest to help others.

These are all small changes, and even they feel a little bit ridiculous given the monstrous difference between how we live and how others live, both across the ocean and across the street. But we have to start somewhere. I’ve detected a pattern in my life where I talk about something long before I do anything about it, and I’m desperately hoping to remedy that. I feel like these small steps are definitely in the right direction.

None of this is being shared to pat myself on the back - in fact, it makes me sad how many things we talked about doing we’ve backed down from. I think we’re barely scratching the surface of this thing, and right now we’re too afraid to do anything huge.

We still have a lot more questions than answers, and honestly we’re really nervous about the direction our lives will take in the next few years. There will undoubtedly be plenty of people who will think we’re strange for not living at or above our means. And while we have no plans to grow out dreadlocks or start smelling strange, there’s a chance some of our friends might think we’re too weird and stop hanging out with us.

I hope you’re not one of them.