Over the past few years, I have noticed that a new expression has entered the everyday speech of many Americans: “Living your best life.” There are hundreds and hundreds of self-help books carrying this title or this phrase within their titles. If you google the phrase, you will get millions of results for websites and blogs that seek to teach you how to live your best life. If you simply skim a few of these sites, you will see very similar phrases and ideas popping up again and again:
Live in the present moment
Do the things you love
Take care of your physical and mental health
Set healthy boundaries for yourself
Step into your own control
Accept yourself as the powerful creator you are
Realize your full potential
Enjoy the good things of the world and have a good time
While there is nothing inherently bad about any of the things I just listed, collectively these things and the very phrase itself always causes me to inwardly cringe. I think it is because it is all just so self-centered. In the sites I skimmed, there was no mention of anyone else’s good, potential, or needs. There was no indication that living your best life should also involve taking a moment to consider how the best life you are leading impacts other’s ability to lead their best life, or to even live at all. So presumably if you decide that living into your full potential means driving the largest and most gas-guzzling car, living in the most energy consuming home, and working in a profession that continually makes its profits on the backs of others and the planet, then so be it. You have stepped into your own control. You have accepted yourself as the powerful creator that you are. You have realized your full potential. You are living your best life as you choose to define it. You. You. You. Me. Me. Me.
And I think this phrase is emblematic of the individualistic culture that we are all living in. In a sense, even if we don’t use this phrase, isn’t this the religion that we have all been taught to follow in our highly individualistic, market-focused, and consumerist culture? Haven’t we all been taught both explicitly and implicitly that the goal of our lives is to fill ourselves up with stuff, achievements, privileges, experiences, control, and power? Haven’t we all received the message over and over again that the key to our happiness is finding our own individual comfort, success, and security? Sure, it is good to help others too, but you can do that from your excess. That’ll be the icing on the cake. Just make sure you have a really good cake first before you give any away.
And religion hasn’t challenged us much on our individualistic and consumerist view of the world. Conveniently our culture has separated our world into that which is spiritual and that which is not. The spiritual in this duality concerns where we go when we die. We should follow certain rules given to us by an all-powerful and imperial God who will reward us with heaven after we die if we follow these rules or send us to hell if we don’t. Most of these rules are focused on purity and giving from our excess. This all-powerful God doesn’t seem to be too interested in the systems of this world that cause some to have too much while others do not have enough. And heaven is usually imagined as a place in which there are no limits on our comfort and happiness. It’ll all be good in heaven. We will live our ultimate best individual life when we get to heaven. And by and large religion has embraced this dualism.
And I wouldn’t really care or even be mentioning this in a sermon, if I thought that viewing life through such an individualistic lens impacted only those who are seeking this kind of life. But I think seeing the world in this way and living this way (which we are all doing to some extent) is having dramatic and catastrophic effects on those who don’t have enough and the very planet itself. Seeking to live our best individual lives through consumption, control, privilege, and power is leading to terrible lives for billions of people and has stressed our planet, our island home, to its breaking point.
We do not live on a planet of unlimited resources and unlimited energy. If some of us use too much of anything other parts of the creation will not have enough. Climate change is the result of too many human beings using too much energy and taking up too much space on the planet. And we do not live in an individualistic world. This is not the reality of creation. To believe otherwise is to believe a falsehood. Every part of our creation depends upon every other part of our creation for life. We are here this morning because of the process of evolution that took place over millions of years. We eat because life dies, whether that is plant life or animal life. Organisms take care of our waste. I could go on and on. We do not exist on our own. We are not all that matters. Science is very clearly demonstrating this to us.
And true religion does not separate the spiritual from the secular. All is connected. All is spiritual. All is of God. Despite how Christianity is often presented, Christianity as portrayed in our Scriptures supports the idea that everything is connected to everything else. Our Christian Scriptures, when read in their totality, do not depict an all-powerful God who is arbitrarily seeking our purity and will reward us if we remain pure and eternally punish us if we do not. Our Scriptures depict a God who chose to limit the divine self so that creation could exist. Our Scriptures depict a God who loves the world and inhabits this world in all its glory and all its mundaneness. Our Scriptures depict a God, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, as the one who does not take up all the space but limits the divine self that other beings might have space and life.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death–
even death on a cross. Philippians 2:5-8
In Jesus we see the face of God. And the face of God that we see is not the face of one concerned with self, but one concerned with other. God created space for us, and we, who were made in the image of God, are called to make space for God, by making space for each other and for all of creation. We make space for the rest of creation when we say “enough,” recognize the interdependence of all life forms, and willingly place limits on ourselves. We make space for the rest of creation when we recognize that there are limits to space, energy, and life on this planet. We make space for the rest of creation when we understand that other lives matter too and not just our own, and live accordingly. We live our best lives not when we fill ourselves up and step into our own control, but when we empty ourselves, let go of control, and make space for other life outside of our own lives.
And this has everything to do with the flourishing, even the very survival of our creation, including humanity. We can’t keep consuming and filling ourselves up with stuff, even if what we are consuming and filling ourselves up with is “green.” Buying an electric vehicle is great but it doesn’t mean you can drive more. You still need to drive less. Solar panels and wind turbines are wonderful, and we all need to reduce our energy consumption. Our climate crisis is caused by big industry and oil, and it is caused by the ways we choose live in this world. It is about how we live on a daily basis—the food we eat, the transportation we use, the size house we live in, the consumer goods we buy, the luxuries we allow ourselves, the amount of long-distance air travel we permit ourselves and so forth. And this life that we ordinary well-off North Americans are living is unjust to those who cannot attain this lifestyle and destructive of the very planet that supports us all.
If we wish God’s creation to flourish, all of God’s creation, including us, actually if we wish it to be here at all, we will need to empty ourselves. We will need to empty ourselves of the idea that we are the center of this creation. We will need to empty ourselves of the idea that we are here to live our individual best life. We will need to empty ourselves of the idea that creation exists for us and our enjoyment and pleasure alone. We will need to empty ourselves of the idea that we can live and move and have our being without the rest of creation living and moving and having its being too. And when and if we do this, we will find that this is not the act of denial that we think it is. We will find that this emptying actually leads to real fulfillment, to real life, because in the emptying we will make space for God, the real source of our best life.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
We are being called to lives of simplicity and restraint. We are being called to look beyond ourselves to the rest of creation. We who have more than we need are being called to move down the comfort index so that others may have their fair share. We who have power and privilege are being called to use our influence, privilege, and money to elect politicians who will make the systemic changes needed to make sure that all of creation has what it needs to live and move and have its being. We are being called, to quote Sallie McFague from her book Blessed Are the Consumers to “become literate on ecological matters” and to teach our children “what is the most important education for living on planet earth: our house rules: Take only your share; clean up after yourself; and leave the house in good condition for others.”[1]
And I know this call is overwhelming. I am overwhelmed by it too. It is important to remember that the outcome is not within our ability to control. All we can do is wake up each day and seek to release a little bit more of our ego that we might get a little bit closer to understanding that we are not the center of the world. We are called to make a little more space for the rest of God’s creation. We are called to empty ourselves just a little bit more that others might have the space they need. And when we make a little more space each day, we will find ourselves not empty, but filled up with God. Amen.
[1] McFague, Sallie. Blessed Are the Consumers. 2013. Fortress Press. Minneapolis, MN, Kindle Edition, Location 4959.
