Forget happiness. You’re called to a throne.
Jordan Raynor sits down with Joshua Becker, Author of Things That Matter, to talk about why he left his 15-year career as a pastor to blog about minimalism, how our stuff distracts us from the good works God has prepared for us to do, and how to combat “the work beneath the work” that’s killing our souls.
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[0:00:05.1] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast, I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren’t pastors or religious professionals but who work as podcasters and contractors and writers?
That’s the question we explore every week and today, I’m posing it to Joshua Becker. One of the leading thinkers in the minimalist movement, author of the wildly popular blog, Becoming Minimalist, and a few bestselling books including, The More of Less and Things that Matter. Joshua and I recently sat down to talk about why he left his 15-year career as a pastor to blog full-time about minimalism to Christians and non-Christians alike.
We talked about how our stuff distracts us from the good works God has prepared in advance for us to do and how to combat the work beneath the work, the work of seeking the applause from others that is killing our souls. I think you guys are going to really enjoy this conversation with my new friend, Joshua Becker.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:23.5] JR: Joshua Becker, welcome to the podcast.
[0:01:25.3] JB: Oh it is good to be here, thank you for the invitation.
[0:01:28.7] JR: Yeah. By the way, do you go by Josh or Joshua? And is this strategically related to the fact that there’s a California senator named Josh Becker who takes up the first page of Google search results?
[0:01:39.8] JB: Really? They take up my search result?
[0:01:41.7] JR: Josh Becker, not Joshua.
[0:01:44.0] JB: I must have clicked on my name so many times that I always just come in as top result. No, gosh, how long do we waste time on such a trivial question? Joshua, my wife calls me Josh, my whole family calls me Josh. At my first job, they put my name in as Josh and so all of my mail, all of my official documents came in as Josh Becker and I thought I sounded like such a kid and so when I went to my second job, the boss asked, “Do you prefer Josh or Joshua?” and I said, “Actually, I prefer Joshua.”
[0:02:19.4] JR: “Thanks for asking, new boss.”
[0:02:21.1] JB: So it’s been Joshua ever since except for anyone who has ever known me my whole life.
[0:02:25.8] JR: Like any narcissistic author, I have a Google alert from my own name and every once in a while, some, like, teenage kid will pop up as Jordan Raynor, who was like a soccer player who is like killing it, there was like a football player at one point who was killing it as Jordan Raynor. I was rooting for them but at the same, like, “Please don’t destroy the first page of Google search.” It’s like the worst, most narcissistic thing in the world that I’ve ever admitted to.
[0:02:52.6] JB: I will never admit to having the same thoughts about a baseball player up in New England.
[0:02:58.6] JR: There you go, and a particular senator from California. Hey, so I want to start with the story you’ve shared a gazillion times, the story that sparked your interest in minimalism for you and your family. Can you share that with our listeners, Joshua?
[0:03:12.9] JB: I can. 14 years ago, I was living in Vermont, I was a pastor. I was a pastor for 15 years and my wife and I, we had two kids, my son was five, my daughter was two and we’d been married about 10 years at that time and had a couple of different jobs and a couple of different pay increases and it seemed like every time we got more money, we just seemed to buy a little bit bigger house and a little bit more stuff, living a pretty typical middle class suburban American lifestyle is the way I describe it.
We woke up to do our spring cleaning on a Saturday morning of Memorial Day. I would work on Sunday and then Monday we would finally be able to enjoy the holiday weekend. I offered to clean out the garage. It had been this long winter in Vermont and everything was dirty and dusty and muddy and disorganized. I also had this vision of my five-year-old son enjoying the garage cleaning project with his father, which lasted about 30 seconds and then –
[0:04:19.1] JR: Sounds about right. I am familiar with that.
[0:04:20.5] JB: Yeah, such a dad thing to think that your son would want to clean out the garage with you. So anyway, long story short, I’m working on this garage, my son’s in the backyard, one thing leads to another, hours later, I’m still working on the same garage, pulling everything out, organizing, hosing everything down. My neighbor, her name is June, she’s out doing all of her yard work and at one point, we happen to walk past each other on the boundary line there and she made a comment to me.
She says, “The joys of home ownership huh, Joshua?” and I said, “Well, you know what they say, the more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you,” which I had read on a cat poster or something but never really processed what that actually means and she responded with one sentence that’s changed my life. She said, “You know, that’s why my daughter’s a minimalist, she keeps telling me I don’t have to own all this stuff.”
I remember looking at the pile of dirty dusty things in my driveway, things that I would have said weren’t making me happy, we would all say our possessions aren’t making us happy. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw my five-year-old son swinging alone on the swing set on the backyard where he had been all day, alone, by himself and suddenly realized that all the things I owned weren’t just not making me happy but all the things I owned were actually taking me away from the very thing that did bring me happiness in life and not just happiness but meaning, purpose, significance and fulfillment and joy and that was the day. That was the day we decided to become minimalist and start owning less stuff.
[0:06:10.1] JR: I love it. So you werea pastor at the time. I don’t think I knew that, right? I knew you were a pastor at some point, I didn’t realize at this particular moment you were. Talk about the career trajectory from there because you're not pastoring a church full-time today, correct?
[0:06:26.9] JB: Correct, I’m just a writer, just a writer, speaker. That was a Saturday. By Monday, I had started a blog, which was never meant to be anything other than I just wanted a place to document my journey. I had tried blogs before but just never found anything that I was interested in writing about more than once or twice.
But I’m like, “Man, if we’re going to be making this change, there’s a lot to be writing about, what are we getting rid of, what are we keeping,” and those types of conversations. So I started blogging literally within 48 hours, and the more I wrote about our experience owning less, the more I wrote about the benefits we were experiencing, the things that I was learning about myself, the things I was learning about the world and society, the blog just kept growing and growing to the point where about a year and a half to two years later, I was starting to wonder if I could keep doing both full-time, both pastor and blogging and writing and the different opportunities that were coming that way. So, three and a half years later, actually, let me do my math here a little bit better. I’ve been writing about full-time for 10 years and that was 14 years ago.
So, four years into it, finally got to the point where I’m like, “I can’t do both full-time.” I found most of my spare time, I was thinking about, “How do I help people own less? How do I help people find the freedom that comes from owning less?” and I remember thinking to myself, “There are a lot of better pastors than me in the world but there are not a lot of people writing about minimalism better than me. Maybe this is what God would have me do next.”
[0:08:19.8] JR: All right, so you don’t know my story. This is the first time we’re meeting. I have a very, very similar story. So, my first career was in tech entrepreneurship. So not a pastor, right? But I had a book come out. This book called, Called to Create, came out about five years ago and it just took off. Lots of momentum, lots of opportunities around that and it was the same calculus.
It was one of, “Which vocational path is more unique and which I’m most uniquely qualified to fill?” I was like, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who could run this tech startup I was running at the time. As well, let’s face it, better than I can but I felt like there weren’t a lot of people raising their hands and saying, “Hey, I’m going to write 30 books helping people connect the gospel to the work they’re doing in the world.”
So it was just like more unique, I was like, “Yeah. That’s the thing I’m going to double down on.” Was that part of the calculus for you? Just like, that’s what it sounds like, it’s like, “Oh, this is more unique and I feel like God’s uniquely qualified me for this type of work.”
[0:09:19.8] JB: Yeah, and man, I skipped over about three and a half years of really wrestling with this decision. My grandfather was a pastor his entire life and he used to say, “Joshua, if God has called you to be a pastor, don’t stoop to be a king,” and man, I loved pastoring. I know so many people who blog and write and like the dream is just to be a full-time writer and I almost feel bad because that wasn’t even what I wanted.
[0:09:52.9] JR: Yeah, that’s interesting.
[0:09:54.5] JB: I just imagined and just thought I would always keep pastoring and love that work and it did get to the point, number one, where I couldn’t do both and I saw a unique role there. It also became a point where, so, I don’t write for Christian audiences specifically but certainly, everything I write comes from my Christian worldview but I could see a spot, a role where I could play a different role in the church by pursuing this writing career and moving people towards minimalism.
I saw it as such a problem inside the church, as much as it is outside the church, consumerism and materialism and how it just distracts us from fruitfulness in so many ways and so there was a part of, “Hey, I can play a different role in advancing the kingdom of God both inside and outside the kingdom by pursuing this.”
[0:10:47.6] JR: Yeah and that’s what this podcast is really about, right? The fact that those of us working outside of the four walls of the church, the literal local church, which I love and I’m a big part of, are doing ministry, right? I look at the work you're doing today in fighting back against consumerism like, “Oh, I get how that’s ministry.” Some people in our audience might not get that connection though, Joshua. Do you see what you're doing today as “Ministry,” as “The work of the Lord” and if so, how?
[0:11:18.4] JB: Well, I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t. I specifically believe, in my deepest heart through both prayer and counsel from others, that this is the best role that I can play in advancing the kingdom of God. That has always been my hope and my goal and my dream and my desire is I want to play the role. I want to accomplish the good work that God has called me to do while on earth and for me, this is it.
There’s a piece where I can see for people outside the church, where if I can call people to minimalism, if I can call people to not looking for happiness and joy in possessions and money, that they’ll have to turn elsewhere to find their fulfillment in life and they can go anywhere they want, like it can be, “I’m going to stop buying possessions so that I can travel the world, I’m going to stop buying possessions so I can retire as early as possible.”
You can go look for happiness anywhere you want but I firmly believe that eventually, all those roads lead to dead ends and eventually, you can’t help but find Jesus once you’ve dislodged this cultural expectation that we all just seem to have that more things are always going to satisfy and more things are going to make us happy.
So that’s how I see the role outside the church and then, yeah, inside the church, you know, in the parable of the four soils, the third seed gets planted, grows roots and it’s choked out by weeds and thorns and doesn’t bare any fruit and Jesus explains, it’s pleasures, worries and money that choke out the fruitfulness of the seed and as I told my church when I was leaving, I said, I used to read that passage and thank God that I was the fourth soil.
Thank God that I was the fruitful one but I am pretty convinced that the American church is the third soil and that we have the gospel, we’ve accepted it, we have faith, we have all these incredible resources but our fruitfulness is being choked out by wealth and possessions and worries and pleasures.
[0:13:40.9] JR: Yeah. I love this quote, I can’t remember if I heard it in a sermon you preached or whatever but you said, “As Christians, we want to become less attached to worldly things and more attached to Godly things.” But I want to draw out some nuance here that I think is really important, right? Because scripture does tell us that the material world is good.
God created it good and never once renounced that claim. I’m thinking of Paul’s words, I think it’s in I Timothy when he said, everything that he’s reminding his reader, everything God created is good and nothing needs to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. So how do you reconcile this with the call to minimalism? That the material world is good but somehow, we’ve attached that to idolatry and how do you reconcile these two things?
[0:14:29.2] JB: You know, you probably nailed it right there, that it becomes an idol. That anything good can become an idol. You know, I’m pretty convinced that in a lot of ways, we have overlooked Jesus’ warnings to the rich. Even Paul’s warnings to the rich. He says, we all know the famous one, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” and everybody says, “Well, good thing I don’t love money. “
We all just want more of it all the time and, “I don’t love it, I just always want more of it,” but you know, Paul said, man, brilliantly, he said, “Those who desire to be rich fall into a temptation and a trap that lead men into destruction and despair,” and I am convinced that if you walked into any room, if you walked into any church and you ask, “Hey, how many of you want to be rich?” 90% of hands go up.
We all want that to be true, not all of us but most people want that to be true of them and yet, you can’t read the gospels without Jesus constantly saying, “Hey, be careful of the wealth. Woe to you who are rich,” and you know, wealth is not – a life is not founded in the abundance of possessions and he tells the rich young ruler, “Sell your possessions and come follow me and you’ll have treasures in heaven.”
I’ve heard that sermon preached so many times and man, every time that sermon is preached, the preacher says, “Now, I know Jesus told the rich young ruler that he needed to sell his possessions and come follow me but I want you to know that Jesus didn’t really mean that you have to sell your possessions to come follow me. What he really meant is whatever is keeping you from Jesus, that’s what you need to give up.” And everybody breathes a sigh of relief that they don’t have to give up their stuff to follow Jesus and I’ve just seen it entirely different.
Owning less and actually beginning to live out what Jesus called us to do, I’ve found the less I owned, the more I freed up money and time and energy and focus to follow him and to accomplish more for his kingdom than ever before. Sure, there’s a truth that everything God created is good but it so quickly becomes an idol and it so quickly becomes a distraction.
[0:17:03.4] JR: Yeah, I think that’s the nuance, right? Because any – I think the danger in this conversation is looking at the material things, the material world is bad, the spiritual world is good and obviously, we know that’s unbiblical but it is about idolatry, right? Material things can be good, materialism is a sin, right? It is about turning these material things into ultimate things, competing for our hearts and distracting us from the good works God prepared in advance for us to do, right?
[0:17:38.2] JB: We began going through our home and we got rid of about 60, 70% of our stuff and my approach was always, I always say I approach minimalism very rationally. We were never going to sell everything and move into a hundred square foot tiny home. I mean, I was a pastor, we had three different small groups meeting in our house, I was doing premarital counseling like. It was always going to be, “What do I need to own in order to most accomplish what God wants me to do and then what is everything that’s just distracting me from that?”
So as we began getting rid of things and like, man, it’s so much more calm and peaceful in our home, we’re not wasting as much money, it’s less stressful in our home. It was just – like over and over, more contentment and more generosity, more gratitude, better example for our kids like, life was improving in so many significant ways by owning less stuff and I turned to my wife at one time and I was like, “Man, minimalism is wonderful. Where has this been my entire life? How come no one told me about minimalism?”
And it occurred to me like mid-sentence that this isn’t new, that Jesus was saying the exact same thing 2,000 years ago. The problem was, even growing up in churches, whenever I heard people talk about consumerism or materialism, it was always talking about the evils of consumerism or the downfalls of materialism or why all those things were bad.
It was always like the negative side of the coin and I don’t ever remember a pastor standing up and saying, “Hey, I got rid of 60% of my stuff and let me tell you how this has freed me to pursue God with more of my life,” and so, I’ve always approached the conversation, not as – I mean, materialism is bad, there’s that side of conversation but I’ve always been, “Hey, let’s just invite people to the freedom that comes from owning less.”
When they do that, they can’t help but number one, you know, I think run into spiritual conversations but number two, they become just more freed up to find Jesus in new ways of their life than they ever thought before.
[0:20:01.9] JR: No, I love that so much. Connected to the work and vocation a little bit, maybe stories from your community that that you see like, how does owning less physical stuff make space to do better or more work that advances the kingdom on earth that it is on heaven?
[0:20:17.6] JB: Well, you know, we all live finite lives. Finite money, finite time, finite energy and the less we own, the more we free up those finite resources for the things that matter most and so there’s an element of just owning less frees us up more to pursue things that matter. But equally, it’s like, I don’t think we – I certainly didn’t understand the weight of this until I tried to make the change in my life but so much of our life is focused on accumulating more and more.
How much time do we spend shopping or how much time do we spend thinking about buying something or watching the new trends, whether it be in clothing or in home décor or whatever it might be like, just how much of our way of life is wasted in pursuing those things? And so, you remove both the burden of possessions and you remove the attention that it gets in our lives. Another thing that I discovered and I guess, you asked for questions of – stories of other people, I always keep talking about myself.
One thing that was a bit unexpected to me is, we began taking things out of our home and goodwill and Salvation Army and like the one minivan load full of stuff is great and the second minivan load full of stuff is great but like the third or fourth minivan load of full of things that I began taking to local drop-off centers, I started asking myself some pretty difficult questions starting with, “Why in the world do I have three minivan loads full of things in my home that I don’t need?”
Why do we, certainly as Christians but even outside the Christian world, why do we buy stuff we don’t need? What is the motivation that would compel us to buy something that we don’t need? Man, the more I searched that in my heart, the more I discovered, you know what? I think there is a lot more jealousy, I think there is a lot more selfishness, there is a lot more greed, there is a lot more wanting to impress other people. There’s a lot more holding onto the world, there is a lot more trying to settle my discontent with buying something. Maybe there is a lot more looking for happiness in my possessions than I ever thought and so for me, it both freed up resources, it freed up focus on my life and it taught me things that I needed to work on in my heart as well.
[0:23:02.4] JR: Yeah, that’s good. I really love what I’ve read so far of your new book, Things That Matter, and I love how you structure this, right? It is all around these eight distractions that keep us from living more meaningful lives, which is directly relevant to our audience and I love that you called out one of those eight distractions as happiness, right? It is a distraction to meaningful work and a meaningful life. Why is that a distraction Joshua?
[0:23:28.3] JB: Yeah, certainly a catchy title for the chapter. You know, anyone who reads the chapter will realize that I am talking about the selfish pursuit of happiness that, as I say in the book, there are two pretty common pursuits in our lives. There is the pursuit of happiness, it is even in our declaration of independence or constitution, whichever one it’s in, and the pursuit of self and those things just come pretty naturally to us.
The problem becomes when we pursue happiness in the pursuit of self and in reality, almost like every study, we haven’t even mentioned this yet Jordan but you know, one of the early transitions, I am going to take a long road to answering your question, one of the early decisions I made in my writing was my first, as I was writing a blog and pastoring and I was referring to Bible references and things like that.
At one point, I made a conscious decision that I said, “Hey, this message benefits people regardless of their faith or non-faith background,” and so I began writing in a way that wasn’t just for Christians but would resonate with anybody who wanted to think about these issues and wrestle with them and so I started to realize, “Hey, I’m promoting a Biblical way of life but I can’t refer to Paul as the reason why we should be living out this life.”
It was unbelievable how easy it was to find social scientific studies that prove everything the Bible talks about in terms of how to live your life in a meaningful and fulfilling way and man –
[0:25:25.3] JR: Common grace, right? God working in the lives of these people to reveal truth even though they can’t put a Biblical reference to the truth.
[0:25:33.5] JB: Just constant studies about how generous people feel more fulfilled by the time they reach the end of their lives, people who serve others, people who help others, people who volunteer, people who live selfless lives reach the end of their lives consistently reporting higher self-satisfaction and more happiness and more joy in the life that they lived.
So that’s the point I make in the chapter is that this selfish pursuit of happiness whether it be acquiring things for ourselves or just constantly wanting more and more for ourselves whether it’s notoriety or money or even sex, you know? Almost everything if we approach it from a selfless viewpoint ends up with less regret and more meaning and more happiness in the long run.
[0:26:22.7] JR: Yeah, I have been thinking a lot lately about this spectrum of what Christians believe about the meaning of work. I think there are few people, very few, who would say, “There’s this indiscernible value to my work. I have no idea why I go to work, I go to work to get a paycheck,” blah-blah-blah, whatever. Then there’s like this middle ground, which is hyper-individualistic, right?
“Work is about my happiness and impressing people at a party when they ask me what I do,” right? It;s really talking about the pursuit of self or the pursuit of happiness, right? That is actually a really small story compared to the Biblical story of work, which really is this instrumental view of, “No, your work is a means of yanking pieces of the eternal Kingdom of God into the present,” right?
That’s so much bigger and brings so much more sustainable joy than working for your temporary pleasure. There is this great quote by N.T. Wright, he says, “Forget happiness, you’re called to a throne,” right? That’s like spot on, it is not this temporary happiness. It is the joy of losing ourselves as one of billions of actors in this grand kingdom drama.
[0:27:41.1] JB: Yeah, you know there is a whole chapter in the book on work and rethinking work. One of the distractions that I refer to I think that distracts us from a meaningful life is leisure, just the pursuit of leisure. CNN recently called early retirement the new American dream and you know, my grandpa was so brilliant, he would say, “You don’t find retirement in the Bible. In fact, you find just the opposite,” you know? From dust to dust.
[0:28:05.9] JR: That’s right, we’re going to reign forever and ever on the new earth, yeah.
[0:28:09.4] JB: Yes and work in the garden and work in heaven and work isn’t something to be despised but when it is approached selflessly and I will credit Dorothy Sayers with this whole idea that work is love. When we start to see our work as love rather than, “The work is what I do to buy the house. The work is what I do to buy the car or take the vacation,” or even worse, “The work is the thing I do until I can make enough money to not have to work ever again for the rest of our lives,” there’s just no selfless lasting fulfillment in seeing our work as selfish.
But when we begin to see, “Hey, work is me doing what I’m good at to serve other people so that they can do what they’re good at to serve other people, then we all go forward.” I tell a hypothetical story in the book about, imagine someday when everyone was doing everything and some family is like, “Hey, we’re better at farming and you’re better at hunting and you’re better at sewing. How about I go hunt all day and you sew all day and you build the houses all day and we’ll have better food and we’ll have better clothing and we’ll have better shelter amd we’ll trade at the end of the day and we’ll be better off because of it?”
And I think that that is how we should view the work that we do and whether it’s a barista, whether it’s a cashier, a teacher, an accountant, a landscaper, a manager, a writer, a podcaster, I think that when we all see, “Work is me doing what I am good out to help other people,” we all move forward and we all, I think as we lay our head on the pillow at the end of the night, a little more satisfied with our day.
[0:30:05.3] JR: Yeah, it’s a great definition. I love Sayers’ summary of the Biblical view of work. She says, “Work is not primarily a thing one does to live but the thing one lives to do,” right? She can say that because of God’s model of work and rest in the beginning. Rest one day, work six and I love, you said in your book, “The goal of work isn’t more rest. The goal of rest is better work.” Talk about this a little bit more.
I talked a little bit about this in my last book, Redeeming Your Time, but for you personally, how have you found that rest enables you to do the work better?
[0:30:45.7] JB: Well, there is a supernatural component to this that is difficult to explain. A little bit like you know, when it comes to the tithe and when it comes to money that God can do more with 90% than I can do with a 100% and I think that there is a supernatural aspect to just following God’s instruction in our lives that God can accomplish more work in my life through six days than I can do working seven days.
[0:31:17.4] JR: See Chick-fil-A.
[0:31:18.8] JB: Yes, that’s a pretty good example and so there’s that aspect. There’s, you know, I think you just find the, just the physical aspects of rest and what it refreshes us and refreshes our body and refreshes our mind. The other component that I think can never be neglected here is that sometimes just stopping the running all the time brings a perspective to our lives that we can’t find if we’re just running all day every day.
So the designated time of rest, one day a week, allows us I think to evaluate the direction of our lives a little bit more and forces a little bit of stillness upon us and can’t help but force some of those questions of, “Hey, am I chasing the right things? Am I doing it the right way?” as well.
[0:32:17.2] JR: It’s also when you have a lot of creative ideas, right? Not intentionally but I think I’ve had every book title idea come to me in church on a Sunday morning, that is not a knock on my pastor’s preaching, I take copious notes, right? But there is something to be said for that. All right, so we have talked about some of these distractions from your book. We talked about the distractions of stuff, of happiness, of leisure.
I want to hit on at least one more that I think is really important for this audience of Mere Christians. You talk about for you personally, the most serious distraction is the applause of others and I know that’s my biggest distraction. I know that for a lot of our listeners. How have you experienced applause in a practical way to be a distraction to work God’s called you to do?
[0:33:04.2] JB: Yeah. Man, I trace this back to my childhood but I’ll skip over that unless you really want to hear –
[0:33:09.2] JR: No-no-no, don’t skip over. No, don’t skip over.
[0:33:11.7] JB: Let me tell the story where I realized this was such a problem in my life and then maybe trace me back to my childhood a little bit. So gosh, I forget the year, I forget how long seven or eight years ago, I self-published a book called, Clutter-Free with Kids, and it was the number one parenting book on Amazon for two weeks and I’m like, “I self-published a book and it’s the number one parenting book for two weeks?”
I was pretty proud of myself, I just passed a couple major milestones in blogging and doing it fulltime and I was on top of the world. I tell the story in Things That Matter and I was at my dining room table doing some work one evening and there was all this chatter on Twitter online among kind of the simple living minimalism intentional living crowd that a couple of friends of mine had been featured on Yahoo.com as minimalist.
Man, my immediate reaction was, “Why in the world did Yahoo feature their story of minimalism and not mine? I got the top-selling book. I talk about this better than they do. How come they got this publicity?” and it lasted for weeks because then The Today Show called and so and so called and they were just everywhere for a couple of weeks and man, I really struggled with it and maybe two and a half weeks later, I was speaking at a conference in San Diego.
The great writer Anne Lamott was there and it was a writer’s conference and someone asked a completely unrelated question during a Q&A with Anne Lamott. He asked her about how does she deal with negative reviews of her book and she responded by saying, “If you are looking for fulfillment in other people’s opinions of you, you are never going to find it,” and I immediately just retraced the last couple weeks of my life.
I was like, “How come I can’t feel just fulfilled in knowing I am doing what God has called me to do?” And somehow, if nobody is noticing it, if I am not getting all the notoriety or accolades then somehow, I’m not fulfilled in this. Like something is wrong in what I’m pursuing and it’s a constant struggle for me and as an online creator or in so many – I mean, probably in every profession but as an online creator, there are things that I can do that I know I’m called to do or there are things that I know are going to get me clicks on the Internet and likes on the Internet and shares and reach.
When the goal just becomes more clicks, when the goal just becomes more notoriety or more fame or reputation or more acceptance from other people, then that is going to cause me to compromise doing things that I know I am supposed to be doing instead and so that is how it looks for me. I think it plays out differently in so many people’s lives but when being noticed by others becomes the motivation, it can too often distract us from the things that provide lasting significance and meaning in the long run.
[0:36:46.9] JR: Totally and for me, I think when you are operating in that position, you’re constantly craving the applause of others, you are always operating and approaching the work with fear as opposed to freedom, right? Because if this book doesn’t do well or this episode doesn’t do well, there is something ultimate to lose each and every time, right? Your sense of worth, your sense of self.
Tim Keller calls this, it’s the best phrase ever, I love it, he calls this the work beneath the work, right? It is working to prove that I am something that the work can never give me, which is ultimate approval, ultimate acceptance, ultimate worth that can only be found in Christ but this is hard. Man, this is super hard and you know at a practical level, I just find that this becomes really tough for me if I am not preaching the gospel to myself regularly.
Not just coming to the text and saying, what’s in here that I can share with others but I need this. I need to be reminded that I am God’s son and to whom through Christ Jesus, He is well-pleased, right? That’s enough, right? He saved me to go do this work and I was just going to do it and I may be a two-talent servant and I may be a five-talent servant but I am going to do it for the master’s happiness, right?
[0:38:04.3] JB: When we – I think when the – when we’re content with our motivation is when we become content with what it returns us. A little bit like if I know I am doing what I am supposed to be doing in the kingdom, to the best of my ability, I believe I am doing what I am supposed to be doing, then it doesn’t matter how much notoriety comes from that but when there’s just – when the goal becomes, “Hey, I want to make a lot of money.”
“I want a lot of notoriety. I want to buy the fancy car,” like when those things become the motivations, it’s like we can never get enough of that which can never satisfy and the easiest way to overcome any of those distractions, I think is to put ourselves squarely in the will of God doing to the best of our ability what He’s called us to do and you commented well, just that this is hard and I am pretty open in the book that these aren’t eight distraction that we didn’t even talked about fear and regret and some of the other things that pop up in the book, that these aren’t like one and done type things. It’s like we checked it off and that’s no longer a distraction.
I still struggle with the pursuit of money and the pursuit of possessions and fear. I struggle with everything every day. Someone once – just a couple of days ago, the subtitle of my book is, “overcoming distraction to pursue a more meaningful life,” and someone said, “You need a more powerful word than overcoming distraction. You should say destroy distraction to pursue a more meaningful life because it is a more forceful word and people –
[0:39:51.4] JR: Obliterate.
[0:39:52.1] JB: “People would be more apt to read it,” and I’m like, “You’re probably right but I don’t think these are distractions you destroy or obliterate,” and literally think we overcome this every single day is the right word for what I think how this plays out in life.
[0:40:09.1] JR: That’s good. Joshua, we always wrap up with the same three questions. Number one, I am curious which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting more frequently to others?
[0:40:19.8] JB: I can tell you the most recent book that I started recommending, an old book called, The Greatest Salesman in the World. I gave that to all the members of our staff, I hadn’t read it, someone recommended it and I’m like, “What is this old thing?” and I picked it up and I loved it. Also, the other book that I always recommend to people, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, again, a couple of old books.
But I remember, I got into writing and I started seeing this book everywhere, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and I’m like, “What a terribly mischievous manipulative title.”
[0:40:56.3] JR: Yeah, right, conniving, yeah.
[0:40:57.4] JB: I don’t want to read a book about that and then I picked it up and read it and I’m like, “Oh man.” He talks about being kind to people and he talks about being –
[0:41:05.7] JR: Oh this is why he sold ten million copies.
[0:41:08.7] JB: I am like, “Man, everyone should read that book” if they haven’t.
[0:41:10.7] JR: That’s good. Hey, who would you want to hear on this podcast talk about how the gospel shapes the work of mere Christians in the world?
[0:41:19.4] JB: Yeah, I’d love to hear someone like a farmer just talk about how their love of God compels them to work.
[0:41:25.6] JR: One thing from today’s conversation you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?
[0:41:31.2] JB: I would reiterate that I believe that Jesus meant it when He said, “Sell your possessions, give to the poor, come follow me and you will have treasures in heaven,” that it is time for us to stop thinking that our possessions are not keeping us from fully following Jesus and accomplishing all that we can for His kingdom because when we begin living that out in our very – in our specific situation, like Jesus called somebody to give up everything and follow Him but He called the demon possessed man to go back into the city and live in his home and share the gospel there and so but how we live that out I think will influence our fruitfulness in more significant ways than we even imagine.
[0:42:22.8] JR: Yeah, well said. Joshua, I want to commend you and every mere Christian who is listening for the important kingdom work you do every single day, right? Not just when you’re a pastor but what you’re doing right now and for helping us resist the things that distract us from doing our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Guys, the book is, Things That Matter by Joshua Becker. Joshua, thanks again for hanging out.
[0:42:47.9] JB: My pleasure, thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:42:49.6] JR: That episode was encouraging, I hope to all of you and the work you’re doing in the world today but also challenging to you, I know it was for me. Hey, if you’ve got somebody you would love to hear on this show, I want to hear about it. Go to jordanraynor.com/contact and nominate somebody as a guest for the Mere Christians Podcast, even if you nominate yourself, that’s fine. I love those nominations, we truly do.
Guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I’ll see you next week.
[END]