To be or not to be; to do or not to do

I'm a good Christian. And that means that I should do something for Jesus. In fact, I should constantly be doing something for Jesus. After all, time is short and there's lots to do. So I'd better get doing, because there's a lot of work to be done.

The parable of the talents would seem to give credence to that approach. After all, the guy who had five talents worked really hard and got another five. And God was happy with him. And the guy who had three talents worked really hard and got another three. And God was happy with him. But the guy who had one went off and buried his talent. And God was angry with him. So the moral of the story is that God expects you to produce. You need to produce fruit, the Bible says. And we'll be judged on whether we produce fruit. So if we're trees producing fruit, we'd better get onto producing lest we wind up kindling in the fires of Gehenna, right?

Actually, I don't think so.

The more I think about it, the more I think that God isn't as concerned with what we do as he is concerned with what we are. I think we, particularly as Americans, have been socialized that we're expected to produce. I mean, when you're in the job, you're there to produce. And we're rewarded based on how we produce. So we'd better get producing or we're going to do poorly on our performance appraisals.

Except I don't think God is our boss. I think God is our father. For my kids, I care what they do. If I see clothes on the bathroom floor, I get irritated. After all, they have two legs and two arms and two eyes, so they should see the clothes on the floor and use their arms to pick them up and use their legs to put them in the hamper.

But more than that, I care what they are. I get after them about the clothes because I want them to understand that they have to pull their weight. Because the lesson of picking up their own clothes has a lot of parallels in adult life. Because it will help shape what they are.

There's a certain passiveness in being a good Christian. Mother Theresa called herself an instrument in the hands of the Lord. An instrument by itself is entirely passive. It does what its user intends. Now, Mother Theresa didn't live a passive life, but she did act passively in the face of God, allowing herself to be used as He saw fit.

A better example is an apple tree. An apple tree doesn't strain to produce fruit. It produces fruit by virtue of the fact that it's an apple tree. Just the same, if we concentrate on being, the doing will come on its own.

So what does it mean to concentrate on being? It means that you need to figure out what you are and then try to be that. Figure out what you stand for, then live according to that. For me--and I would presume to say, for all Christians--what we want to be is His. And if we concentrate on being His, then when it's time to do and when it's time to make decisions, we'll know what to do.

The secret is that we're not here to try to produce fruit, we're here to be His. And if we can be what we're supposed to be, the fruit will be a natural outgrowth of what we are.