For most people, being practical is a blessing. As some say, “Common sense isn’t that common anymore.” But I won’t lie, being painfully practical has been one of the biggest struggles of my faith journey.
I’ve been painfully practical since a very young age – at two, I knew that I had a strawberry allergy and needed to ask if strawberry items were “arfillyfiffaly” flavored. At just under three, I encouraged my Dad to pack sunscreen for his business trip to Australia due to the ozone depletion. I think I was confusing Australia and Antarctica, but still extremely practical advice from someone who won’t tie their shoes for a few more years. When I was five and learning to ride my bike, I stopped about a tenth of a mile from a manhole cover and asked my dad what I was supposed to do once I got there.
While being pragmatic has helped me a lot in life… finding and keeping a job, making decent life choices… it’s been a pain in the butt when it comes to my faith. Still today, I’m the only heretic who gasps for air when the Church District Treasurer says something about, “The budget doesn’t always come out on paper, but God always provides.”
The best “joke” was when God called us to be a part of a church plant because, c’mon, church plants are not very practical. It’s always fun to answer people’s wondering questions like, “So why are you doing this?”… “Where are you going to work?”… “Why are you in a hurry to move?” with vague generalities about how God called you to do this work, with subtle undertones of “please try to understand that I’m not a total idiot… I hope.”
While I know that God has gifted me with that pragmatism for a reason – I can provide sound reason in emotional moments… I’m a good “Devil’s Advocate” (no pun intended), but I also don’t want to be held back by that. God does A LOT of stuff that doesn’t make sense – you know, like miracles and stuff. Like people living lives separated from God and then one day God helping it all “click” for that person, and them laying down everything. That doesn’t make sense. And it sure as heck isn’t practical.
But if I served a God of human reason and human practicality, I wouldn’t need faith. I would know the answers. I wouldn’t live in wonder of what my God would do that day.
When life doesn’t make sense… when it’s not practical… when you’re following the “rules” and losing… You have to make a choice. You can become angry about all the things that happen that don’t make practical sense, OR you can thank God every day that he made the rules of pragmatism, but is constantly breaking those rules to reach broken people. It wasn’t practical for Jesus to live a blameless life and then suffer at the hands of people he’d ultimately die for… but he did it. And that’s a much better story for all of us.
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