I wanted to pick up a pen tonight so I could write some notes in my Bible as I read it. I recently picked up a new Bible after giving my old one away at the request of a friend who had been talking to a homeless man while waiting for me to arrive at a small club down in Hollywood. We were to see two of his favorite musicians play that night. The man my friend had been talking with didn’t have a Bible but said he wanted one. My buddy sent me a text while I was on my way and asked if I could give him mine. I happen to have it in the car with me so I said yes. A month or so later, I had picked up a new one at a local bookstore but didn’t have a pen that wouldn’t emboss the pages. This is why I put on a coat and set out the door to walk a few blocks down the street to a market that has a modest stationery selection.
I looked through the different packages of pens that were available to me. I just needed one pen, but pens don’t seem to come in ones at this particular store. I looked at each type of pen packaged in twos and fours. I thought how it must be nice to be one of these pens cause you’d never get lonely. I settled on a package of four fine tip gel pens that flowed with black ink. As I paid for them, the cashier told me they were her favorite pens and I would love them. I told her I was excited to try them and wished her a good night.
As I walked out of the market and took the long way back home, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I had just bought more than I needed, more than I wanted. I’m not just talking about the three other pens in the packaging. I’m talking about the packaging itself, the little piece of metallic something or other that’s somehow a theft deterrent device, and the printed instructions on how to use the pen in three languages. I didn’t walk out of my house thinking I really needed to pick up a piece of card stock just big enough to go around 4 pens and printed full of marketing jargon as to why every person needs to use the enclosed pens, but I got one. All I wanted was a simple pen. I ended up getting more than I realized. This reminded me of working on my 1988 Toyota 4Runner I bought when I was nineteen. I loved that truck and would do a lot of the repairs and maintenance myself. I was always amazed at all the different parts that went into making my truck do all the different things it did. It wasn’t so much the parts that amazed me but how I never realized I was buying any of those parts when I bought the truck years ago. It’s the kind of feeling I would get when I’d see a real human skeleton in a classroom during my college years. I’d wonder how much it would cost to get one of those, only to realize I already had one, inside of me.
All of this got me wondering about what we really get when we buy things. I mean when we buy a pair of shoes, sure we get some rubber, plastic, leather and laces, but what else do we get? We get a box. We get some of that thin paper they usually use to wrap the shoes in and maybe a bag to carry it all out with. The thing about all of these is we can hold each of them in our hands, but on this walk home I started wondering about all the stuff we get with our purchases that we can’t hold in our hands, the things we hold inside of ourselves, the deeper and sometimes darker places of our hearts, minds and souls. I don’t think anyone buys a new sweater because they want to hate another person for spilling something on it, or buy a new car to be paranoid about someone hitting it or scratching it. I don’t think a father buys himself a new tool so he can cultivate disdain towards his own son for breaking it, or a brother buys a new video game so he can punch his younger brother for touching it. But this is what happens. This is what we get without realizing it. Stuff has a way of making us think we need it, making us do the unthinkable to protect it. Our stuff is no longer about us, but we are about our stuff. It becomes who we are.
But somethings at times go deeper. Take my car for example. I bought it for a lot of reason that would make sense to most people, but one of them was so I could go out on more dates. Towards the end of my time with my 4Runner, it wasn’t in great shape. I had backed it into a few buildings, the paint was fading, it made a lot of noise, and smelled of engine grease. The last girl I dated while I had that truck wouldn’t be seen in it. I needed a car that wouldn’t scare off women if I was ever to go on a date again. I thought a new car would fix this problem. It did. I went on more dates. But now when ever I think of giving that car up, it’s not just giving up my ability to go where I want when I want, but it’s a death sentence for my dating life, even a dating life that has been dormant for years now. And what does this say about me? It says that I don’t believe I’m enough. Women won’t like me for who I am. It’s a loss of identity or at least a separation from understanding who I really am. I think it might go even deeper than this though. Maybe the very bottom isn’t a faulty understanding of myself, but a faulty understanding of Christ and not having my identity rooted in Him.
I thought of Christ not even having a place to lay his head while he was walking the country during his 3 years of ministry before his death, then I thought of the rich man who ran up to him to ask him how he could inherit eternal life. Here was a man who had every material possession he could want, face to face with a man who had nothing to his name. Jesus looked at him and asked him to sell all his possessions and give the money he made to the poor. He told the rich man this would give him treasures in heaven. Then he asked the rich man to follow him. But none of this happened. Instead the rich man turned with sadness and walked away from Jesus. Jesus went on to explain it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. To this the people around him respond, “Who can be saved?” It’s an interesting response. I think most people wouldn’t look at themselves and say they are rich, but these people did. And maybe we are too. Either way, the rich man’s identity was in all of his things, in the social status that comes along with all of his things, and in the facade of self security built up from having his things. Christ’s identity was in the work of God and in what awaited him once he was back with God. If my identity was really in Christ, then I would be busy with the work of God, not consumed with obsessions over things that might keep me from following God.
As my thoughts continued to ramble through my head as they often do, I became more disgusted with stuff. I was walking along a back alley and could see into backyard after backyard as I walked. This is what happens when you’re a six foot three inch man walking through a neighborhood built in the 1940s, back when people were shorter it seems. I saw stuff piled on top of stuff in these backyards. People had built up sheds and overhangs and shelves just to accommodate more and more of their stuff. It wasn’t even good stuff. It was dirty and rusty and discolored by the sun. But it was their stuff. They probably loved it. They might not even know what to do with out it. I know everyone isn’t this way with everything, but everyone does have something. What is my something? What are the things that are controlling me? What are the things that I hold onto tightly? What are the things that I’m refusing to give up? What are the things that are keeping me from fully loving God and other people? I just don’t want to get to Heaven and know I could have given more. So maybe I should start giving more now. To open my hands of all of my material possessions I believe will also open my heart to be more like the heart of Christ, open my mind to understand more the truth of Christ, and open my soul to be more sensitive to the leading of His Spirit.
So… maybe it’s time to get rid of some stuff.
