The Illusion of the Status Quo

 It may surprise some folks, but the truth is that, for most of my existence, I've actually been driven by a desire for stability. I'd been looking for a big organization to just become a number in, a stable home, a stable, predictable job in which I could also be "working for the Lord," and basically a life which I had all planned out where there would be a status quo. 

     When looking for a secular job, I preferred large corporations. When looking to be involved in ministry, I preferred large, established denominations, organizations, and my dream job at one time was just being a church pastor in a church for the next forty years, living in the rectory and growing old there. Before that it was being a missionary in the same work with a major missions organization for decades. I had wanted there to be a regular, predictable status quo for my life that I could just fall into. A regular income. A stable community and place to live that didn't change. Most of the uprooting and unpredictability of my life came, ironically, from spending years trying to chase this illusion down and force it to become a reality when those who seemed to be the gatekeepers to it decided I wasn't the right person to pass through those gates. It's actually illustrated in the way I used to play World of Warcraft. Most people live out their fantasies of being the hero and slaying dragons. I lived out my fantasy of working with my own hands and earning an income from it.

     My other drive was to chase down and understand what the right thing, the right way was. At each stage of my life, I sought to be a part of the right church, the right way of thinking, and to do things in the right way as far as I possibly could. Naturally, this started with trying to do things the way everyone else told me to do them, or trying to do things the way everyone else did. Being who I was with the way my brain worked, that did not go well much of the time, nor did it go as I had expected or anticipated. 

     The more I sought the right thing, the further away from a stable, status quo life I became. The more I sought to understand the truth of things, the further away from the stable, status quo churches and organizations I have become. The more I pursued both truth and stability, the more they clashed with one another and that competition between them turned everything upside down in my life for decades. The truth is that in order to achieve the status quo and stability, you have to sacrifice what you know to be true for whatever fiction the gatekeepers want you to believe and profess. And I could never do that. In the battle between the pursuit of the right thing and achieving stability, I would choose what I understood at the time to be the right thing every time. And the peace I thought would come with the stability I imagined was forever out of my reach because of it.

     The problem is that the status quo is an illusion maintained by a system, and the people who are so invested in that system that they will fight to protect it from anything and everything that doesn’t fit their understanding of what truth and the right thing is. They aren’t interested in what the truth actually is, only their version of it, or what they think it is. That’s why it’s stable and “status quo.” It doesn’t change, even when new data or new information is discovered which outdates or contradicts it.

     I’ve been reflecting on this ever since reading the book “Think Like A Warrior.” In it, one of the characters says, “There’s no such thing as maintaining the status quo. It never works. As soon as you stop trying to move forward and you set your sights on maintaining, you start slipping backwards. You’re either playing to win or playing not to lose” (Herb Brooks).

     Because of this, I’ve also been reflecting on the Apostle Paul, what his goal was, and what he did to pursue it. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize that Paul was saying much the same things as the book I was reading about pursuing total transformation and conformity to Jesus Christ. Paul knew he could only control his effort and attitude, and not everything else around him. He didn’t even try. He was wholeheartedly devoted to the pursuit of Jesus Christ, loved being a disciple and attacked it every day with joy and enthusiasm. You can’t really set a higher goal, dream bigger, than being just like Jesus at His resurrection, and boy did he ignore those who tried to tear him down and stop him. He was relentless, like the disciple version of a Navy SEAL, and no matter what happened, he did not give up. Ever. He constantly chose faith over fear, and made it clear that whatever was not done from faith was done from one’s own malfunctioning flesh, which was controlled by fear. He understood that the status quo was an illusion out of the gate, so to speak, and didn’t even try for it. For him, it was arriving at the resurrected state in this life or bust. He had no backup plan. There was no nice cushy pastorate waiting for him in Antioch, Ephesus, or any other city he preached in. There was no wife and children waiting for him, or who traveled with him to even give him the semblance of stability.

     I feel like this is what the Lord, and even Paul, was trying to remind me of and teach me over the last several days, and to make me really think and consider what my goals in life have been and are now. What do I really want? What do I really love? And if I was to be honest, I really love the same things Paul did. I love being Jesus for people. I love channeling Him for people, seeing their reactions when they recognize Him in my words or my actions, even if they don’t understand it themselves. There was time I thought it had to be done in a certain contexts controlled by yet more gatekeepers, but that too was an illusion. It’s the heritage, inheritance, and mandate of every disciple of Jesus Christ. Like him, I know I’ve far from arrived at the goal, but as many times as I trip up, stumble, and fall, I get back up and keep running, chasing after that goal for the prize at the end. And you can’t do that if you’re just trying not to lose. You can’t do that if you don’t push yourself towards the finish line, leaving the illusion of the status quo behind.