The Choice Between Comfort And Connection

"If you decide that it's a bad thing to worship God, then choose a god you'd rather serve-and do it today..." Joshua 24:15, The Message.

As the temperature in North Texas begins to climb into the 90s, I face the annual choice between comfort, connection and the environment.

I can close the house, turn on the air-conditioning, and work in comfort. Thus using more electricity and ultimately increasing my carbon footprint, air pollution and bill. Or I can open windows, enjoy the sounds of birds, dogs, lawn mowers and UPS trucks, and feel connected to the world. Yet, as much as I enjoy the sounds of the nature and life, I know that opening the windows also allows pollens, mold spores and air pollution into my house, which in turns affects my allergies and asthma.

This isn't a small choice. In fact, according to media, it might be a key choice driving our culture.

We choose the comfort of suburban living and automobile travel, and we lose connection with our communities and clean air. Some choose the zest of urban living in tribal enclaves of young adults, and we lose connection with the older and lower-tech. We choose the comfort of urban dwellings and we lose connection with nature and wide open spaces.

We choose the comfort of frozen foods, pre-packaged meals and we lose the connection to locally grown and the Earth as sustainer. We choose the comfort of foods from around the globe and we lose the connection to the harvest from our own gardens and the dirt as the ultimate leveler of all that is.

We choose the comfort of consumerism and capitalism and we lose the connection to the land and nature. Our throwaway consumer mentalities encourage us to discard our trash and look away as it is dumped in the landfill where we change the landscape and control the Earth.

We choose the comfort of planting non-native plants and controlling our land, and we lose the connection to native plants replenishing the Earth, using less water and resources. We choose the comfort of having a well-manicured lawn, looking like the Joneses, and we lose the connection to nature and wildscapes providing habitat restoration and conservation, the essential ingredients for wildlife.

We choose the comfort of web-centric work and telecommuting, and we lose physical connection with colleagues, customers and irritants. We choose the comfort of specialized work at which we feel competent, and we lose connection with other possibilities, learning-through-failure, and self-discovery.

We choose the comfort of passive, undemanding entertainment, and we lose the connection of personal conversation, books and long walks.

We choose political goals that undergird our comfort-candidates seen only from a distance, entitlements that meet narrow personal needs, policies that protect creature comforts-and we lose connection with other classes, other cultures and other people's needs.

We wage wars to preserve our comforts-as distinct from our rights, freedoms and values-and we seem dangerously willing to sacrifice our "inalienable rights" to win the struggle for air-conditioning.

In religion, we choose the comfort of short services, ministries on demand, control by complaining, and homogeneous congregations serving self-defined needs, and we lose connection with what God actually yearns to give us and with what God needs from us.

We choose the comfort of settled questions and looking backward, we lose connection with mystery and ambiguity, where Jesus lived, and the new words that God promised us. We choose the comfort of church-as-tribe, and we lose connection with the amazing things God is doing outside our tribe.

We choose the comfort of small battles for control, and we lose connection with the "household of faith," an assembly of the wounded and yearning who seek God and risk transformation. We clothe our control quest with piety, but the naked truth is we want safety from a demanding God, control of the faith transaction, and distance from the intrusive.

Too many church leaders choose the comfort of attending meetings, drafting mission statements, honing identity, fine-tuning budgets and evaluating the enterprise, and we lose connection with the chaotic nature of pastoral care, the profound disruption of creativity, the noise of a noisy world, and the experience of actually touching a life and making a difference.

We choose the comfort of small lifestyle rebellions, as if buying organic foods had sufficient holiness, and we lose connection with the hungry and with God's maddening call to consider them our neighbors.

In all of this, we choose the comfort of conformity and safety, and we lose connection with our own stories, our true selves, whom God knows and loves passionately.

I think Jesus anticipated this dilemma. That's why Jesus called his friends to embrace suffering, self-denial, radical sharing, and a togetherness that was more organic than institutional. His teachings focused on humankind's primary ways to achieve control and comfort, namely, wealth, power and exclusion.

I don't have a clever scheme for resolving the consumer social responsibility dilemma. Right now, I just need to name it and to ask what I am losing by requiring comfort.