Closing Doors

A major omission in the lives of a great many members of younger generations is found in a common inability or unwillingness to make appropriate decisions in life-factoring areas, and then commit to them.  This seems surprising given the tendency of youth to take risks that more mature persons would not countenance – at least for themselves.  This tendency for risk in physical involvements can be just as exciting, and far more meaningful, when transferred to ongoing concerns of life, education, family, profession, even faith.  Jim Elliot, fellow college friend of mine and eminent missionary martyr, put the point well when he said: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.  He and his four colleagues with their wives risked all for the purpose of evangelizing a tribe in South America.  The five who gave up their lives, and the five bereft of their husbands would in some other time warp, make the same decision they made as they did, perhaps with a different approach to objectives. (Some say that if they had brought their wives they would have lived.  The wives were back at camp monitoring the radio.)  What happens to us in forming our lives for meaning?  Society and our parents don’t, on the whole, manage the business of youth formation really well.  Certainly many families manage it well.  The point here is that in the larger perception there is too little done to draw on the magnificent potential of youth, energy, idealism, time availability and responsibility to find the best context for productive and service oriented life that leaves to heaven the glory of a life well lived and dedicated to meaningful purpose.

The world around us offers us windows for life, and we make of them doors to pass through.  Why do so many with the dreams from the windows fail to make those windows doors for their lives, perhaps for other lives as well?  After working for decades with students, counseling with others, especially parents, I suggest we do not open the doors because of feelings about default, temperament, or no point for return. Default occurs for various reasons.  Delay in choice seems endemic to many of us.  We will get to it someday, but not today.  This is well illustrated in the response of Felix to the Apostle Paul, after the Apostle had given him strong reason for making a commitment to Jesus Christ.  Felix suggested that he might consider a decision in the future.  (Not to say yes is to say no.) Scripture repeats events in which the choice was quite deliberate – the choice not to make choice.  Agrippa virtually said: Not now, maybe never.

Closely related to default is temperament.  There is no feeling of self-competition.  We are not really in competition with each other in the world, but in competition with our better selves and our lesser selves.  We are competent for either moving forward or backward, so moving or stalling on the continuum of our lives.  Some of us stall.  We never get out from under the accidental experience of our lives so to launch out from the wading pool that met our needs as children, but unsatisfactory for adults.  We may cocoon our lives.  There is no risk permitted.  Isaiah’s point of making decision and going for it doesn’t seem to fit us.  We don’t want to be hurt.  We don’t want to meet life with risk in it.  We don’t want to risk failure.

In recognition of loss of what was the best order for our lives made of decisions, effort and commitment to become the best we can be, the most forlorn comes from persons who feel they have gone past the decision-making period and there is no going back.  All that is left is some regret, perhaps guilt and disappointment.  One of the saddest moments of my ministry occurred at a retirement center in California where I was the guest speaker for a significant population of retired persons.  The administrator of the magnificent, sprawling city-like housing community met with me just before the service, and spoke with professional courtesy about what he felt was an important insight: You understand that all the persons in this congregation are over 55 years of age.  They have fairly well determined what they believe and how they want to live out their lives. You will understand they should not be disturbed about faith, change and new religious direction for their lives.  They simply should be comforted.  I respected his authority, but never spoke there again.  Knowingly, I prefer to minister where there can be some difference.