"Contentment? What Contentment? They essentially labeled me crazy and unfit to fly an airplane."
"Who's they?"
"The psychologist, a lady, I don't even remember her name. She seemed so sincere and unbiased in the interview. All she did was take notes and ask tell-me-about-a-time questions," I vented to my wife, who was doing her best to empathize with my fuming as I paced around the room clenching the disturbing letter. The letter was like a medical insurance claim that had been denied without explanation, except this matter was the outcome of my interview at my hoped-for career job as a pilot, the position I had spent fifteen years studying and striving to achieve. To have an indifferent professional wave her hand and dismiss my effort was unsettling, to put it lightly.
"I was saying that I'm content with where you're at now, and maybe this is YHWH's answer as to where you should be," my wife tried to clarify.
My interview had been set up at the airline’s corporate office in two phases over the course of two days. Despite being thoroughly prepared, I was relieved to learn that I had passed the difficult technical portion of the interview on day one and was invited with ten other candidates for day two. The only event on day two according to the selection committee was a formality and said to be a last look for the company to identify troubled candidates, as in psychologically troubled. Everyone had professionally chuckled at this description because we all knew the company had a surreal number of positions to fill and would be hiring for the rest of the year. Day two was intended to be easy. This intel only made the embarrassing letter, the letter that stated my application was under review and my conditional job offer suspended until further notice, that much more traumatic. This matter was so penetrating that I ironically had to call out sick, or unfit to fly, for my next trip at my then present flying job. I was disturbed like an egg rolling toward the edge of a counter. My whole perception of reality, who I was, my existential self-image had been called into question. Thus, all the hours of that next day and many hours over the next two weeks were spent steeping like green tea until all my thoughts were bitter. I recited and analyzed every word and look that I could recall of the interview. I did this over and over again, looking for the flaw, for the cause of the psychologist's determination. And more than once did I sink to the position where I agreed with the professional's conclusion (my obsessing behavior being sufficient evidence for my diagnosis).
Teaching Contentment
As I call to mind this distasteful experience and think about this concept of contentment, I am struggling with the idea of pursuing greatness (or at least pursuing something greater in life than the average). More specifically, I'm struggling to balance this idea with the idea of contentment (or being satisfied with present circumstances). And teaching my son to keep this baseball bat balanced on its end cap is the deeper end of my conundrum. How does a parent teach Biblical contentment without losing their child's attention to the luster of greatness that this world is ever advertising?
1 Timothy 6 presents the Biblical case for contentment, and various college admissions departments across the country present the worldly case for personal greatness. The answer I find that mediates between the opposing sides of this abstract musical scale is Exodus 20:17. Curiously, this verse is written as an answer to both conundrums: how to balance personal advancement with contentment and how to teach that balance. Exodus 20:17 KJV says:
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
My Inmost Motive
The answer as it pertains to parenting starts with me, the parent, and my personal motives for success. Putting honest reflection into why passionate would be used to describe one’s personal pursuit, certainly chastens the motive of that pursuit. And it takes a strong character to chasten a pursuit—a stronger one not to covet. Therefore, I propose that if you can pursue greatness, i.e self-improvement, without coveting what others have, your motive is ripe (ripe like that avocado which is oh so difficult to catch ripe).
Talk About It, Talk About It
When parents are exemplifying healthy motives and are leading by example (considered Josiah’s best teaching method by far—Exodus 20:4-6), the next question is how to pass this behavior along to our children. Hebrews 13:5 would suggest that conversing about the topic of contentment is an effective method. That's easy to do, right? And yet easily overlooked too. Before I'm accused of writing my interpretations into the Bible, I'll note that Hebrews 13:5 only links the three concepts of contentment, covetousness, and conversations—this being a rather difficult tongue twister and an even more difficult verse to put into practice. Rather, Deuteronomy 6:1-13 is the proof text for doing, teaching (by talking), and serving. And speaking of serving, read on.
The Last Shall Be First and the First One Content
Beyond parenting lips, or talking about contentment, the next and best answer to teaching contentment, I truly believe, is to champion being a servant (Matthew 23:1-15). The good part of personal advancement is to improve your capacity to serve in some way. Serve at work, serve at home, serve YHWH, or serve your neighbor. Personal advancement is beneficial if its purpose is to serve. Inserting this idea of servitude into the record player of life brings forth the sound reason of why employers pay a wage (it's for an act of service, to fill a position that needs to be filled or accomplish a job that needs to be jobbed). Take that record out and insert a different hit album: the reason a customer purchases a product or service is to accomplish the same. The pop-music point in the process, where the employee's motive shifts from merely earning a paycheck to fulfilling another person's needs, is the sweet chorus where contentment resonates. This proves true for charity work as well and especially is driven home like a rocking riff when charity is voluntarily delivered to the hands of the poor. Serve the poor and the Song of Intrinsic Value readily returns to count our many blessing that fill our homes, beat by techno-beat.
The Wrap Up That Leads to Godliness
So, in quick summary: be content, talk about being content, and encourage servitude.
Servitude and contentment are embossments on the same imprinting wheel. When the wheel rolls, it goes: SERVITUDE — CONTENTMENT — SERVITUDE — CONTENTMENT...on and on. Yes, servitude is oxymoronic when linked to personal achievement, but it settles into focus when espying contentment. Servitude is what every college curriculum teaches at heart, it’s what every dependable employee does, what every true business does, what every faithful spouse does, and what every parent should encourage. Children are merely in process, and the children that get it are usually easy to spot. Now follow me here:
What is the potential sin of pursuing greatness? Coveting what others have.
What is the error of college admissions? Being encouraged to trade the goal of serving others with that of self-fulfillment or self-enlightenment.
Is there any danger in keeping with contentment? Yes, forsaking godliness in the process (1Timothy 6:6).
And there you have it. We started with a topic of contentment and finished with a frustrating term. Thanks, Paul. What is godliness? Godliness is a rather vague, yet favorite summary word used by Peter and Paul, and often used in the negative form, ungodly, to refer to wickedness. So, keep following my train track: godliness is the noun form of godly, godly is the antonym of ungodly, ungodly is used to describe the wicked, and wickedness can be described as sinning with a motive. Hence by contrast, godliness being the opposite of intentionally sinning must mean intentional obedience, and in this context, intentional obedience means being obedient to YHWH's laws.
All this logic to make the point, Biblical contentment is not laziness. It is founded on obedience to YHWH, and though the Bible starts and ends with obedience, the Bible's middle part details an intercession, the soloist that was needed to recover our failed attempt at making music. After all, without Yeshua's pure note of salvation in our lives, our flailing obedience is still obnoxious static in our record player.
So, let me climb out of this musical rabbit hole. As I first described, it is a struggle to balance these two concepts: pursuing greatness and contentment. On one side, you have selfish ambition (working for acclaim, working for a paycheck), and on the other side, you have apathetic contentment (settling for present circumstances). If you keep that baseball bat balanced, you will garner the giggling attention of your kids. And if you successfully hand the balancing act off to your kids, they'll have purer motives when they take their swing at the big college question, or at least have purer motives than I did.
My Discovery
Coming back to me turning over and over in bed, unable to sleep much of those two weeks after being singled out as unfit for hire, I finally discovered the unhealthy part of the drive that had been taught to me throughout my public education (the idea that you can be whoever you want to be if you try hard and long enough). My wife was right. I was already serving the traveling public as a pilot and could be content doing such for less pay and less notoriety. And I should have been content, even in the face of rejection. Had I been content, how much less would my resultant dishevelment have been? My subjective professional estimate would be: much.
Keep balancing contentment (like a flamingo balancing a Louisville Slugger),
JH
Photo by Winston Chen on Unsplash
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