Shifting World Views

It seems like the more I try to be a good person, the harder it becomes. It the very least (and I'm trying to be charitable with myself here!), the more I try, the more bad patterns I uncover that I want to shed. I was talking with a good friend last night about a couple of women he's seeing, and I felt the most ridiculous pang of jealousy. I've felt it before with him (and other male friends), and we've discussed it, and I know that I have no reason to feel insecure about our relationship, so the recurrence of this knot in my gut annoys me.

I thought a lot about it last night after we spoke, and it stayed with me this morning, so I took some time to meditate on why I feel threatened by people I don't know when I do know that my relationship with my friend is wonderful and we both delight in being in each other's lives.

As many of you know, I meditate on scripture, and this morning I read James. I stopped at two points, but I'll focus on the first one today. Here is what James is telling his audience of Jewish Christians in the diaspora (so the leader of the church in Jerusalem, a Jewish convert to Christianity, was instructing other Jewish Christians on how to reconcile their commitment to the Torah and their faith in Christ. It's a wonderful letter. If you have a few minutes, you can check it out on-line.):

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. -- James 4: 1-3

That's when it hit me -- that feeling in my stomach isn't insecurity; it's greed. Consumption and possession are so ingrained in who I am that I've even learned to relate to people as goods. I ask God for meaningful relationships, then I take the ones I have and commodify them. People become things I possess or don't possess, and once I look at them that way, I also look at them in terms of their utility. They're in my life because of what they do for me, rather than because of who they are as people. They become resources I mine for value. The implication of that, of course, is that when they stop yielding whatever it is I want from them, I no longer want them around. They've lost their utility.

That's a pretty horrible indictment of my personality, and I don't know that it's completely accurate, but it sure makes me squirmy. What makes me even more uncomfortable is that other than giving myself a stern "Knock that off!", I don't know how to change my pattern. I can only shed this way of relating to the world if I can find another way of relating. And it's not just how I relate to people, it's also my relationships with the material and natural worlds. In a true extreme, it may also be my relationship with the spiritual world. I may have adopted a utilitarian relationship with God. Ugh.

So I'll spend some time over the next week looking for different ways people relate to the world. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but some way that allows the people I know to be in my life without their having to do anything for me. A way that allows me to know people as people, and not as possessions. A way that lets me honor the beauty in the people I know without subconsciously looking for anything in return.

I'll let you know what I find.

Love,

Becky