I like Jon Acuff's writing a lot. His little (huge) blog Stuff Christians Like has been one of my favorites of the past few months.
Also, he's a machine of a blogger, often cranking out multiple quality posts a day. He makes the rest of us bloggers look terribly lazy.
One of his most recent posts talks about the fear a lot of people have of using their gifts that-like much of what he writes-I could really relate to:
I used to use my words to interact with girls online. I used to post funny things, or insightful things in hopes that my approval addiction would get fed in some way. I even started sending out long, bibley emails to friends from church in hopes that they would tell me how holy I was. I misappropriated my greatest gift in a selfish desire to feed my massive ego and numb my wounds.
After a while, I realized what I was doing and decided to never do that again. The easiest way was to simply stop writing. The way I could control it without turning to God was to quit writing. I might have scribbled in a journal, but the swirling and twisting storm of words that seethed inside remained silent. My gift was stolen. There were too many thorn bushes planted by my one talent. I didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
I eventually couldn’t contain it any longer. The words inside me felt like soldiers dying inside a submarine that was running out of air. I asked God if I could write again. I asked him if he was cool with me writing, given my less than proud past. The answer was pretty simple. I felt like he said, “Do you know what I do when you write? I sing.”
Read the whole post, it's worth your time.
Have any of you had similar struggles? Other thoughts?
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Comments (4)
This type of introspection is simply unsolvable and, at least for me, is a practice in self condemnation that leads to another form of self centeredness. It has become fashionable for cutting edge teachers to practice this type of "honesty." I didn't buy it in myself and I don't buy it in any other form.
To me, self introspection is for the purpose of telling myself the truth so that I will stop lying to myself. When I stop lying to myself it brings a form of freedom. I think the trap of Christian thought is there is so much energy put into determining if something is good or bad independent of that something's outcomes.
One of the things that I learned from Eastern thought is that many of the things we label or judge are simply arbitrary or in the realm of preference. I'm not talking about murder or cruelty or things that demonstrate almost immediately by their outcomes that they are harmful. I'm talking about the endless evaluation of motives for things that we do that are neither good or bad.
To me, the core of that type of thinking is shame and fear. Sometimes this is hidden under a layer of approval seeking, even seeking the approval of God. And the approval of God is pretty hard to determine from any real evidence that the left brain is going to believe.
If we really believe in the idea of living in Grace, then I think the Eastern approach of simply ignoring the exercise of trying to determine if something is good or bad is a far better practical practice of Grace than trying to give ourselves and others Grace. And then putting all that energy and focus into the creation of beauty, whether that beauty is being loving and kind or something we share that brings joy to ourselves and others.
(Sidenote: Paul Simon went through a musical drought too, back in the sixties. He said once in an interview that he felt you could always tell that he was musically out of it at that time because his arrangements were not as melodic and his lyrics were not as thoughtful. All you Simon & Garfunkel fans, wonder if you can tell which album he was talking about... : )
Thanks so much for sharing my stuff with folks. I still want to find a way to do something fun and cool with Think Christian and Stuff Christians Like because I really dig what you guys and gals do. Hopefully we can in the future.
Jon