How to Build Your Eulogy

David Brooks of the New York Times recently released a new book titled "The Road to Character" in which he explores stories of people whose moral traits he admires. The seed for the book, he says, came when...

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. 

We are masters of building our resumé virtues, Brooks says, but are largely clueless about building our eulogy virtues. So he set out on a quest to fill his "moral bucket list."

I find his distinction between resumé and eulogy virtues to be very powerful because it strikes me as a secular way of stating what Jesus mentioned several times. In Matthew, Jesus tells a crowd to "store up treasures in heaven." And in Luke, Jesus warns about the troubles that come to those who store up riches for themselves, but "are not rich toward God."

Jesus invited people into a new way of life by talking about and demonstrating a life that wasn't defined by economic or political success, but instead led people to use words like hope and light and joy and love and freedom. God's interest in our lives, he said, leads us to prioritize the eulogy virtues and puts the resumé virtues in a proper (limited) perspective.

For most of my life, I've heard people lament that we work too much, are focused on the wrong priorities, etc., but it seems to me that more people are starting to publicly do something about it. There seem to be a growing number of stories about people taking less pay for jobs with "greater meaning" or arranging their lives for more time with family. Brooks seems to be one of those. And I hope that in the coming years, more of us will, too. How powerful would it be if our world was filled with people whose lives led others to use words like hope and light and joy?

From the Gray,
Pastor Ari

“Am I a part of the cure or am I part of the disease?” -Coldplay, “Clocks”

Jesus Christ, Brain Scientist

Two thousand years ago, Jesus said an awful lot about helping others, being kind and generous, being more concerned about others than yourself, and to be wary of wealth because it can get in the way of our relationship with God. (Normally I'd link to some Bible verses here, but seriously, just pick any page in the four gospels and you'll probably find him talking about one of these things.)

And for two thousand years, we in the church have sought to follow these commands in various ways and for various reasons. Some follow Jesus' words to earn God's favor (or avoid wrath! [neither of which I endorse]), some do so as a public witness of faith, some do so because they think Jesus' words are just a wise way to live, and so on. We sometimes disagree on how best to love our neighbor or feed the poor, but most Christians take Jesus' words seriously and try in our own ways to live them out.

What's occurred to me recently is that modern science is starting to back up a lot of his words about how to live as good for happiness, good for health, and good for society.

• Michael Norton has research that shows we can buy happiness...by spending money on others. 
• Shawn Achor says that spending time doing kind things for others, giving thanks, and meditating (prayer?) are keys to wiring our brains for happiness. 
• Brene Brown has shown that embracing our imperfections (confessing sin, maybe?) and living with vulnerability is core to joy, love, and stronger relationships. 
• In the documentary "Happy," several researchers say their studies show humans are happier in forgetting themselves and helping others than they are trying to make themselves happy. 
• And there are growing studies that suggest that large amounts of wealth are linked to people being less empathetic, less ethical, and less generous (scroll just past halfway to find the studies cited), but not any happier.

I think almost any person would list having a purpose and personal happiness as core goals for their life. Ironically, this research is suggesting that the best way to find them is to stop thinking about yourself and focus on serving, loving, and giving and happiness and purpose will naturally follow. Sounds a little bit like, "Those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Luke 9:24).

Maybe when Jesus shared all these words with us years ago, he wasn't just letting us know what God thinks of things or setting up religious standards for Christianity. Perhaps he was also giving us insight into how we are created to live, in essence saying, "You should be loving, forgiving, and generous because your brain and body is hardwired to react positively to those things."

I am not an expert in all of this science and I know this is a large leap to make, but if we are made in the image of God and God is loving, generous, and compassionate, it makes sense to me that those traits would be indelibly marked within us.

I'm excited to see what else this growing field of science might reveal to us, because for all those who've ever told me that Jesus' words about love and compassion don't work "in the real world," the real world of our brains is starting to look more like the Kingdom of God.

From the Gray,
Pastor Ari

“'Cause we are miracles wrapped up in chemicals.” -Gary Go, "Wonderful"

Pope Francis the Economist

Back at the beginning of December, Michael Gerson had an excellent op-ed piece for the Washington Post about Pope Francis' published exhortation "The Joy of the Gospel." (Side note: I'm in the middle of reading the exhortation myself. If you are interested, you can purchase it on Amazon or download a free digital copy for your e-reader here.) As explained in Gerson's article, part of the Pope's exhortation addresses the ethics of economic systems, warning against economic practices that turn people into commodities and value profit over human dignity. This quickly drew some howls of criticism from commentators who accused him of socialism and marxism, among other things.

Since I believe Gerson does an excellent job of refuting these accusations while simultaneously lifting up the themes of Advent, I won't waste time repeating his arguments. Instead, I want to pursue another thread of the debate that caught my attention.

In reading some of the comments and articles critical of the Pope's position, there was a theme running through much of the thinking that either implied or stated outright something like this: "Economics is not a spiritual issue and a pope has no authority to speak on this. The pope should stick to spiritual issues and let us deal with these real world issues." It was as if some were saying, "You stick to saving souls and let us save people's retirement accounts."

The problem with their line of thought is that money IS a spiritual matter. While we may think of the world in terms of spiritual and secular matters, the Bible doesn't. Everything is a spiritual matter because everything comes from and belongs to God.  And if we look at the Bible, it would seem that money especially is a spiritual matter.  

Jesus talks about money more than any topic other than the Kingdom of God. Yep. He has more recorded words on money than on prayer, heaven, hell, or sin.  Roughly 1 in 7 verses in the Gospel of Luke relates to money. (Or so I've read. I've never actually counted every verse to make sure.) In the Old Testament, much of the condemnation leveled by the prophets stems from people failing to do anything to help the poor, hungry, and unclothed.

Contrary to those who want to say economics is unrelated to "spiritual matters," it would seem that God cares an awful lot about how we think about and use our money. Pope Francis doesn't just have the authority to speak on economic issues, but as a spiritual leader, he has an obligation to address money issues. God expects to be Lord over our entire life, not just Sunday morning. If Jesus has redeemed our entire life, then that has an impact in how we spend our money, do our jobs, act in public, and so on. As Gerson points out in his article, the Pope doesn't hate business or money, but he rightly points out that they, like anything in this life, can be used for good or for ill and we need to be conscious of how we use them.

That's a struggle and I for one face it daily, but I cannot divide my life into two boxes called "spirtual" and "secular" and then hand one to God and say, "You can have this one, but don't worry about what's in the other one." That doesn't deepen my relationship to God. To use an economic term, that cheapens the relationship.

"That kind of luxe just ain't for us; we crave a different kind of buzz." -Lorde, "Royals"