The Search for Significance is Over

Proximity to power never works

Nate and I often end our workday by meeting one another out on the back patio, on our hammock swings, the dogs intermittently bringing us sticks to hold while they gnaw on the other ends, Nate usually with a beer in hand, I usually with a water bottle tucked into my side. We talk about the work day, what we did or didn’t get done, sometimes we talk about something we read or something we thought about. A frequent conversation we have is one I am not comfortable talking about online these days, though maybe someday, we’ll see.

The bones of the frequent conversation, though, lead us back to a familiar grief: the sadness, the unmooring we still feel in evangelicalism, or, rather, the church in general.

A friend gave me language for a kind of grief over a decade ago. She was speaking of her singleness and said that the grief of being unpartnered “hits her at times, but no longer haunts her.”

I loved those words and have found them apropos at many points in my life with regard to many things in my life. The grief of childlessness might hit when I hear a pregnancy announcement but it doesn’t haunt the halls of my home or heart any longer. The grief of our many moves and the effects of them hit me at times when I see the roots my closest friend has put down in a place she’s never left, but they don’t haunt me as we—once again—build a life in a new city. The grief of the many broken or lost friendships we’ve experienced because of politics, the p*ndemic, or the personal tragedy our family experienced in the last five years, these definitely still haunt me rather than hit me, but I know the haunting will lessen as time passes. Another friend, Leo McGarry, gave me language for this: “I’ve been here before and I know the way out.”

But the grief of what we’ve left and lost as we moved away from particular spaces and ways of being in the church, this still definitely haunts rather than hits. The ways it haunts is still surprising to us—a packed one-service sanctuary instead of a spacious two-service one, an invitation to volunteer at our church¹ for something, a word or phrase said in a certain type of way—these small, innocuous things in the grand scheme of things that hold some rub for us still. They remind us of times we would rather forget, seasons we still feel sadness about, environments we no longer see the way of Jesus in.

On the swings yesterday, I say to Nate that one of the biggest shifts I feel in me is an aversion to significance. When I hear women gushing online about finding their voices and spaces and people and places, finally believing their words matter and have power, I feel around within me and ask myself, Do I feel that? and the answer is always no. Maybe a better question I could ask is Do I want to feel that? The answer is still the same though. No.

There was a time in my life when I did strive for significance, when the brush of some leader’s robe would fill me with meaning, when the affirmation I sought from certain people would imbue me with delight, when I thought that proximity to power was good.

That season did not last long. Someone knocked the stool out from beneath me in a painful and unjust way, and I can finally say (more than a decade later) that they were wrong in their means and method. But I can also finally say that I’m thankful for their thorny jab in my side because it didn’t save me from significance (no one can give or take true significance away from any of us), but it saved me from finding meaning or glory in it. It also began the slow process of rewiring the things I found valuable in the ones I wanted to follow.

It made me realize how very easy it is to grift, to find power, to have influence. Finding a microphone and speaking into it is one of the easiest things in the world these days. As much as we might complain about the difficulty of publishing a book, self-publishing or buying our way into a system that will publish our words or voice has never been easier. Everyone is waiting to put someone on a pedestal, to find a mentor, to follow a leader. Everyone is wanting a guru, an inspiration, an example to emulate. The slots are endless, waiting to be filled by someone seeking significance. If you want it, you can have it. Today. All you have to do is want it badly enough and not let anything get in your way.

Francis preaches to the birds, From Saint Francis, by Brian Wildsmith

Nate tells me of a recent report about a man who sings around the country, in the White House, in rallies, who also owns many multi-million dollar homes, the funds with which they were bought are suspect, I guess. I don’t know why this is news, I didn’t look it up. But it doesn’t feel like news anymore. It feels expected, normal.

If you want power and significance, you just have to grab ahold of it and not let go. That’s what so many of these pastors and “worship leaders” and influencers and teachers have done; they have death-gripped the generous hands that pulled them up, stood on the shoulders of the ones they eventually crushed, stomped on the crowds of those who listened, all to get power, influence, significance, and then they’ve gloried in it, lorded it over, created secret spaces where their sin abounded, slept with bits on the side, secreted away stashes of ill-gotten gains, sat at the heads of every table refusing to submit to those wiser or smaller or kinder or quieter.

(I thought of making every word in that paragraph a link to the kinds of leaders you and I know about (it would be easy) but I didn’t want to spend my time doing that. You and I both know it’s true.)

It makes it hard to trust, doesn’t it? It makes it hard to believe that every shepherd isn’t a wolf, that every pastor isn’t a grifter, that every leader isn’t waiting to snatch more for themselves, more power, more money, more influence.

It also makes it hard to want to do anything of significance. And this is where I find myself these days. Actual nausea rises up within me, bile fills up my throat when I think of being thought of as important, an influence, a mentor, anyone’s reason why. I feel utter disgust and distaste for it. And there are some people who think that’s wrong, that believe they have the words of eternal life and we ought to be chomping at the bit to share them. Not me. I’ve brushed their robes and they didn’t make me well, they made me realize how very sick we all are.

I’ve been looking for something different these days. I think many of us are. Maybe it’s a liminal space, maybe a third way, maybe a renovation of our faith,² or a whole new foundation for the faith we thought we had. I’ve never pretended to be anything other than a doubter, one who gropes in the dark, trying to feel my way toward God,³ I’ve made my peace with that a long time ago. But I’m making a new kind of peace, too, peace with the reality that proximity to power is the opposite of God’s way.

The Christians I grew up with, many of the Christians I still know and love, they’re wanting influence in the government, influence in the schools, power in the politics, persuasion in the public square. That’s not in opposition to God for them, they believe that is the way of God, the way of Christians in our nation. But I believe the opposite and it makes me an enemy to them. I believe proximity to power dilutes our witness and the search for significance is a lie that will never satisfy. I believe these two things are destructive to our spiritual growth and corrosive to our souls.

I know many of you are in a similar place, it’s why you’re here, reading Sayable, sticking with me as I grope in the dark, feeling my way toward God in the sludge of these times. I haven’t lost hope but I don’t hold it with quite the same sense of surety I have in the past. I’m more tender about it, softer, more careful, less trusting, less willing to toss my quiet sense of suspicion overboard. I trust the still small voice in me more than I ever have before, even if it takes months or years for the voice to be proven true. I’m slower. I’m quieter. I’m sometimes sadder. And I’m grateful for swings in our back yard and a partner who gets it, one who meets me there day after day and doesn’t rush me through the sludge, but gets down in it with me. I think we all need that.

1. Yes, we do have a church. We began attending the first one we visited last fall and we love it. We really love it. But the thing we love most about it is it doesn’t take itself very seriously. It takes Jesus seriously.

2. I have Dallas Willard to thank for this language.

3. “That they would seek God, if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” Acts 17:27