I spent last week in Dallas, TX with my family. I didn’t intend to take a week off from writing and social media; but I did, and I’m glad. I don’t think I realized how much I had been running on fumes. The Lord has been doing several things in my heart over the past couple of weeks and I needed my pen to be silent. One thing I read before vacation was this little gem tucked away in the minutes from an 1801 meeting of the Eclectic Society of London. This from a Rev. J. Clayton:
If we live much in company, we soon begin to borrow motives from men. Retirement will be the detector of borrowed motives. The things which buoy up another in an impaired state, will be seen by us in their nullity. (Eclectic Society, 213)
Clayton’s comment was in response to a question on the type of preaching which is most conducive to preventing a decline in religion. Clayton noted that a ministry which “comes down in particulars” is to be desired over more broad and general preaching. The particulars to which he was referring is the explicit gospel of Christ. Such preaching has a tendency to “gradually impair”. What Clayton means is that the more we go along without seasons of retirement and meditation we will get entangled in other people’s passions and find ourselves distracted from the gospel.
Frankly, I’ve been guilty of this. I cannot go into details but I found myself having a bit of a whine fest with the Lord a couple weeks ago. I was complaining about things I have little to no control over. So much of my time and thought space was given to these “borrowed motives” Clayton was referencing. I lamented to the Lord that I wanted to be spending my time on things like evangelism and discipleship. I believe his response to my spirit was simple, “Well, why aren’t you?”
Borrowed motives, that’s why. And I couldn’t really see them until I got away. And I needed to mostly unplug from social media as well. No checking blogs. No following the latest sagas. I even found myself disengaging from all the hubbub surrounding the SBC Annual Meeting. I went to sessions, voted for the things I was passionate about, met with a few friends, but more than anything I spent my time drawing near to my family as I drew near to the Lord.
There are so many agendas and motives which we can borrow from social media. There is an outrage every day. There are numerous conversations we can jump into and throw our weight around (no matter how feathery). Likewise, there are plenty of agendas within our local churches and communities to get us all tied up in knots. We can spend months, years, even decades living out of the motives of others.
It’s probably a bit laughable that I spent a little over a week mostly off social media and I’m writing as if I spent 40 days in the wilderness. But this isn’t the end of the journey for me, hopefully just another leg of pursuing deeper faithfulness in Christ. Social media and blogging, I believe, does have a place and is a tool to be used for ministry. But I’m realizing that my roots aren’t as deep as I would like them to be. That’s one of the dangers of social media/blogging, you can appear deeper than you are. You can trick yourself into think that your roots are deep when really your passions and your motives are just borrowed from one day to the next. Having an opinion, or thinking you have to have an opinion, on everything doesn’t lend itself to depth.
I needed this time off to see which motives are borrowed and which ones are mine.
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