Show Me an Adult with the Courage to Fear Differently

Today, for probably the 7th time this year, I listened to a Wheaton College chapel message which I first heard in late February of 2012, just as I was beginning to feel the black shadow of college graduation creep up on me. Of the hundreds of chapel messages I sat through in my four years at Wheaton, this is the single one that remains clearly cemented in my mind, filed at the top of the academic shuffle. I’ve provided the link here, for those of you whose curiosity is piqued enough to watch it. I highly recommend it. Hopefully the speaker, art professor Leah Samuelson, would not mind my shameless endorsement were she ever to discover it (which, frankly, isn’t likely).

You might recall that I quoted part of this message in a previous blog post, back in September of last year (although, on second thought, you might not, given that it was only my second post ever). It is this same section of Leah's talk that caught my attention on the 7th (or whatever it is) listen, as it did on the first.

"How many gifts from God will justify trust and thanks?" asks Leah, speaking of her struggle to find a role model of faithful living in the year after her college graduation. "Are the pressures of life stronger than the call to be wise? Show me an adult with the courage to fear differently."

When I first heard this message, sitting in my pale blue seat in Edman Chapel, I thought I misheard her. I thought she must have said "the courage to live differently." This seemed to make more sense; it is certainly a more commonly used phrase. But after watching the video recording, I realized this is not what Leah said. She used the word "fear," and she used it intentionally.

So many of life's actions are driven not by what we love but by what we fear. We fear rejection, failure, money shortage, loneliness, shame, dependence, low status, the inability to get what we want when we want it. We worry about rent, bills, our appearance, our careers or career plans, doing things to boost our resumes or our cool factor on facebook. Getting ahead. And so our lives become oriented around meeting these needs. In some ways this is perfectly natural; such worries are not inherently bad, after all.

But what if our fears were different? What if we were driven not by these---the fears of the world---but by a different kind of concern? What if we feared selfishness, shallow relationships, greed, complacency, and apathetic living more than we feared not being able to buy a new car or get into a good grad program? What if our lives were oriented so that most of our emotional energy focused not on living well on the surface, but on living well in the deepest parts of our beings? What if we refused to buy into the concerns of our culture and instead lived with a different kind of concern?

I've been thinking a lot recently about what that would really look like. I worry a lot about my future, how I'm going to keep my bank account from running dry, what kind of career I should pursue to make my life feel valuable. These aren't bad things to think about or to want, but as Leah said, I don't want them to become the source of my life's intention. All too often, focusing on these concerns is really the easy path, the route of escape rather than transformation. A bandaide solution to happiness. Transformation is hard, and for those who really don't want it, it is avoidable.

Many twenty-somethings live---even if they claim to deny it---as if there is a magic formula for a meaningful and successful life. Steps include, among other things, a well-paying job, a grad degree, a significant other (leading to marriage), exotic travel, stylish clothes, a cool apartment, a fun group of friends, and some sort of "nonprofit" passion (because who doesn't want to save the world in their free time these days?). And so these are the things we---and I'm not leaving myself out of this---tend to pursue.

Pursuing other things, things like patience, selflessness, community, passion, and servanthood---though we claim to desire them---often fall to the bottom of our to-do lists. They don't feel very urgent. We worry about them after we think about our money or work or status problems. Practically speaking, they are not the source of our lives' intention. And, a lot of the time, they are more difficult to achieve anyway. But maybe we should be afraid; we should worry that we lack them.

I'm not totally sure how to change the orientation of my life so that my primary pursuit is not financial and social stability and security. But I think it begins with a big step back and two open hands. I think it means moving towards God, cultivating relationships, asking big questions, practicing good stewardship, and learning how to be content. It means consciously and daily challenging the assumptions of many of my peers (and myself) that career and success are everything.

When Leah graduated from college, she looked for an adult with the courage to fear differently and ultimately decided that she had to become that adult herself. I think that's what we all need to do.