Admit That You Have a Problem (2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a)

Admit That You Have a Problem

For the podcast recent, Emily and I read Seculosity by David Zahl. Building on the work of Charles Taylor, Zahl presents modern, secular, life as having replaced one dogmatic and graceless religion, unhealthy Christianity, with a series of even less fulfilling, purely secular, dogmatic, and graceless religions – parenting, how we eat, wellness, finding true love, career/success. As I talked about on the show, most of these bounced off me. Yes, I try my best to exercise and try to eat okay, but I follow no modern dogma of maximizing my gains or eating like my caveman ancestors. I actively parent my children and deeply love my spouse, but in both, I largely play for the averages and understand that they all live their own lives for themselves and not for my sake.

The career and success piece touched a raw nerve. Plenty of people in my life, particularly in my college years, pointed out that I live as a functioning workaholic. I’ve talked about it before. I constantly rush from work activity to work activity and have for more than two decades. I work less than I did in my early twenties, but that level of work was setting me up for an early grave. There exist within me some non-troubling reasons for all the work. I genuinely enjoy the adventure that it all takes me on, need a high level of base activity to stave off the ADHD worst case scenario (AKA boredom), and recognize that work in my chosen field makes a difference in the world or in the lives of people. The mental stimulation of academic pursuits, the grind of community organizing, and the weekly rhythms of leading worship and producing content create a fun and interesting existence for me, while also, occasionally at least, helping people. In this version of things, my sin is simply doing far too much of it. I’m motivated by the intrinsic joy of the work and serving others. I simply should rest more.

There’s also a shadow side. I like the extrinsic piece of people noticing my success and prominence. I think that I convinced myself that this piece of me went away sometime in college, when I gave up on politics and answered the call to ministry. I dedicated my early days at William and Mary to clawing my way up the never ending treadmill of success to then hop on an even steeper treadmill. I would work constantly, haunted by the thought that somewhere out there, someone might put in more hours than me and squeak ahead. It all fueled the worst season of my addiction to work. From there, I normally say that I met Sidney, found God and a healthier calling, and settled down into something more intrinsically motivated. This contains a piece of the truth but not the totality of it.

I find myself at a strange eddy in my career, where few people notice my intelligence, skill, or success. For 20 years, I was one of the busiest people that I knew. Now, many of my friends and colleagues out pace me on the competitive business and preach to 12 people. David Zahl’s book brought to the surface for me that I don’t like the feeling that all this lack of extrinsic recognition stirs up in me. It puts me into cycles of self justification. I can’t avoid the fact that some of the desire to claw my way to the front of rat race to then get recognized as the king of the rats remains. I don’t love it.

King David knows the feeling. God’s special boy gets called out by God’s own voice box for rape and homicide. David has to reckon with his own remaining imperfections. He had a tremendous run of doing what God desired and being the king that God desired, but at some point, he got wildly off track – not going to battle with his men, peeping on a bathing woman, having his way with another person’s wife, leveraging military power to attempt to cover up his crimes, and utilizing battlefield strategy to murder a man. God, via Nathan, confronts David with this directly and unavoidably. I don’t think that he loved it.

However, these moments of deep discomfort, of staring at our sin, of seeing our true selves in the brutal light of God’s all seeing eyes, are the only path to redemption. Alcoholics Anonymous and everything based on it (including Weight Watchers) begin with some version of step 1, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.” We often simplify this down to: “Admit that you have a problem.” No healing happens until we confess that we need healing. We can’t receive salvation until we recognize that we need saving.

David shows us what taking that first step looks like. “David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ Nathan said to David, ‘Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.” (2 Samuel 12:13 NRSV) He won’t get out of this consequence free, but he once again demonstrates the spiritual depth that makes him a king after God’s own heart. Rather than having the guards execute the prophet, David confesses and opens up a chance for something different.

For myself, I pray that in being forced to confront the shadow side of my instinct to business, I may finally find some of the peace that eludes me – to be enough and to simply be. The only way to find it is to start by admitting that I don’t currently have it.