Are we unknowingly offending everyone we meet?

There is a socially predictable pattern that takes place when meeting someone for the first time. You know the script:

"Hello. My name is (insert your name). What is your name?"

"Nice to meet you. What do you do for a living?" 

"Me? I am a (insert job title here)." 

The reason this social script is acceptable is not because it "flows" but because it places the values of the culture front and center - Who you are and what you do are one in the same thing. This may be part of the reason why we quickly forget the names of the people we just met (who they are) but we will remember where they are employed (what they do). 

Our culture emphasises what we do, what we contribute, what we produce, what we make over who we are. We would much rather be a "work-a-holic" than be labeled as a "free-rider". Doing nothing is acceptable on vacation, for a day or two, and the vacation better be short.

When we meet people and quickly ask them what they do, we are perpetuating the value of "work" over "being". Ask someone who is unemployed what they do and many times there is a sense of embarrassment. Many stay at home parents also become uncomfortable responding to this question.

Doing work is not a bad thing, it does not however define who we are. We are first and foremost a beloved child of God, created with all the love and joy and hope and dreams of anyone else ever born. We are beautifully complex, we are full of mystery and wonder and each one of us embodies a story that is ever developing. We have a past and a present, we have a future. We are more than what we do. 

So, the next time you meet someone, I suggest that we begin to impose another set of questions and by extension another set of values. Perhaps questions like:

How do you spend your time?

What brings you joy?

Do you have any hobbies? 

What really interests you? 

What is the most beautiful thing you have seen?

Is religion too focused on solving problems?

In many of the discussions of the nature of the church that I find myself in, there is a stream that views church like a non-profit that has a specific problem to solve. This is noble and a worthy understanding of the nature of the church. The Universal Church may have as much resources and people as any other global organization and we can use these resources to solve some very real problems. 

However, when we look at the world and see only problems then respond to these problems by finding solutions we overlook something about the world:

Not everything is a problem to be solved. Many things are paradoxes to be managed. 

Christianity is a religion built on paradox - last will be first, first will be last; faith as a mustard seed can move mountains, die in order to live, leaders serve, obedience leads to freedom, etc.

Paradox is the mother tongue of the faith, problem solving is our second language.

Why do we discount the voice of the dead?

There is this great little story on the TED Radio Hour where researcher Matt Killingsworth shares about a discovery in the area of happyness. Killingsworth created a way for people to answer a few questions, track happiness and get reports. Fittingly it is called Trackyourhappiness.org. 

One of the discoveries that Killingsworth made with all this data is that people are more likely to be unhappy when our minds are wandering or drifting away from what we are doing. Or put another way, if we want to be happy we need to practice being present in the moment. 

Killingsworth goes on to share in the podcast that people have debated what makes us happy for generations and his research give quantifiable data to the "true" answers. 

While this research is fascinating, it strikes me as another example where we value the voice of those who are living over the voice of those who have died. 

Killingsworth research depends on thousands of people in real time giving feedback to their happiness level, then his team crunches the data to discover trends. Brilliant, but if you listen to billions of people of the past, you can plainly see what Killingsworth "discovered". 

One of the significant drawbacks to our current addiction to the "new" and the "now" is that we discount the voice of the those who are "old" and "then". For all the great advances of the newest toys and ideas, should we be also concerned that we are putting a disproportionate amount of weight in the voices that happen to be alive right now?