Getting Some Satisfaction
Most likely I’ll have trouble sleeping tonight because I’m so excited. Early tomorrow morning I’ll join 4 dozen others sporting bright orange T-shirts emblazoned with DreamBuilders 2007 as we gather at BWI for the early flight to Biloxi.
Two weeks ago I met the Bishop of Mississippi, who participated in our annual Diocesan Convention. As he spoke movingly to us about the Episcopal congregations on the Mississippi coast, their courage and stalwart response to the needs of their neighbors, I found myself increasingly eager to get going on this mission, to meet these people, and to try to make a difference.
Of course, any difference we make will be a drop in the bucket of the overwhelming needs of that place. But drops in buckets are not irrelevant. Enough drops, and eventually, the bucket is full.
Why do St Markers and others do this? Why spend our time, vacations, and money on the needs of strangers, when we never seem to finish our own tasks? Why do so many of us do this, and why are so many other St Markers standing behind us, praying for us, supporting us?
It’s not really that we’re all that noble. It’s really because engaging in mission is a big part of what we need in order to satisfy our own hungers. We’re really trying to meet our own needs.
Even if you missed or snoozed through the college lecture about Maslow’s “Hierarchy
of Needs”, his observation is true. Once we are beyond the more basic struggle to find food, shelter, safety, a place to belong, recognition and the esteem (love) of others, we discover yet another need: the need for purpose, for self-actualization. It’s not that others have needs we can fill, as true as that is. This is about our own need: our need to serve. Jesus understood this. His disciples once returned with food from a shopping trip and urged him to eat. He just laughed them off and said, “I have food you don’t know about it. My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.” Serving God, serving others, turns out to be the thing we crave most, once we’ve met those other needs. We’re serving others in order to satisfy ourselves. The more we give, the more we work, the more we serve, the happier we are. How selfish of us to go on this mission trip!
So I’m excited. I’m off to have some very satisfying fun. See you when we get back!
May the Peace of the Lord be with you!
posted by Rick+ @ 9:32 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
"It’s not really that we’re all that noble. It’s really because engaging in mission is a big part of what we need in order to satisfy our own hungers. We’re really trying to meet our own needs."
This sounds similar to an elusive goal of some philosophers, that of showing that morality (or, sometimes, altruism) and self-interest coincide. Of course they don't; the easiest way of seeing this is to note that sometimes morality requires you to sacrifice your own life for someone else, and that's fairly obviously against your self-interest. In addition, as you implicitly note, morality requires caring about others for their own sakes, something not usually possible when one acts out of self-interest.
Nevertheless, it's interesting to think that we have a need to serve. I'm not sure that this is true, psychologically, for every person. I do think it's true that we are fundamentally social creatures. We are made to live together. And part of living together is learning to respect and care for the interests of others. Serving others - that is, placing their desires, needs, and will above our own - is a way of doing that.
The way you put the point is rather tendentious: "Serving God, serving others, turns out to be the thing we crave most, once we’ve met those other needs. We’re serving others in order to satisfy ourselves. The more we give, the more we work, the more we serve, the happier we are. How selfish of us to go on this mission trip!"
That way of putting it makes it sound as though serving others is merely one more of our desires or needs that must be met. That, I think, is probably wrong. But I suspect you're being intentionally provocative, as usual. :) So here is a tentative conclusion for you: serving others is something that we crave because it is a way of loving others and loving God.
We do those last two because we are made to do them. But we don't do them simply to satisfy a need or to satisfy our nature; indeed, given the nature of love, such a thing would be impossible. In loving others, we live up to (so to speak) our nature, but we don't act merely to satisfy that nature.
Intentionally provocative? Who, ME??
However, do note that I said "need," not "crave." One among so many of our culture's destructive habits is to use those two words interchangeably. The reality, of course, is that many of the things we crave most are things we most desperately need to avoid... and many of the things we need most are things we crave little or even not at all.
Grace and peace,
Rick+
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