The book is about pastoring, but I think it really applies to any vocation. For instance, Peterson talks about the application of products to congregations, in an attempt to make them bigger, or happier, or healthier or whatever, and how that is really idolatry and a snare of the devil. How often, I thought, do we apply products (like self-help books, lists off of TV shows, or tips from magazine articles) to our families or marriages? And isn't it the same thing?
Here is a passage that struck me, one that Peterson says was originally about monasticism and which he substituted "pastoring" for; I have substituted "family" or "marriage" or "mothering" for his substitutions. (Clear as mud? Buy the book and read the original passage. It's worth it.) Here it is with my substitutions of his substiutions:
What is useless and destructive is to imagine that enlightenment or virtue can be found by seeking for fresh stimulation. The mother's life is a refusal of any view that will make human maturity before God dependent on external stimulus, "good thoughts", good impressions, edifying influences and ideas. Instead, the mother must learn to live with her own darkness, with the interior horror or temptation and fantasy. Salvation affects the whole of the psyche; to try to escape boredom, sexual frustration, restlessness, unsatisfied desire by searching for fresh tasks and fresh ideas is to attempt to seal off these areas from grace. Without the humiliating and wholly "unspiritual" experiences of family life-- the limited routine of trivial tasks, the sheer tedium and loneliness--there would be no way of confronting much of human nature. It is a discipline to destroy illusions. The mother has come to the family to escape the illusory Christian identiy proposed by the world; she now has to see the roots of illusion within, in the longing to be dramatically and satisfyingly in control of life, the old familiar imperialism of the self bolstered by the intellect. (Emphasis and substitutions mine.)
Wow, huh? And the thing of it is, it applies to everything. That's probably at least one reason why the book of Jonah is in the Bible; everyone, in every situation (not just mine! not just yours!) is regularly tempted to just quit, to chuck it, to drive off into the sunset with the music turned up, and to find the better life. Recognizing that it is really a temptation and not a legitimate need or longing is half the battle.
"Grow where you are planted" is a trite way of saying what I'm getting at (and I hate that saying, actually, mostly because it's usually accompanied by bad art of a flower in a tin can or something). In a more profound way, we can recognize that our vocations (whether they are mother, engineer, nurse, pastor, farmer, or whatever) are the conditions we have been given for sanctification. Saying that we'll become sanctified as soon as we get a new job (or as soon as our husband starts doing his fair share, or as soon as the kids are sleeping through the night, or as soon as we lose the weight) is the same as saying we'll be sanctified when there's nothing else on our list--or, never.
As C.S. Lewis puts it in the Screwtape Letters, Satan's strategy would be to never let us suspect that the hypothetical object of our fear ("what if I lose my job?") isn't the cross we're being asked to bear. The fear (or the boredom, or the loneliness, or the routine) is, and the grace we are provided with will help us with that current temptation. But attempting to submit to a dozen hypothetical futures at once ("He'll never help me with the kids, I'll get fat and wrinkled, and my house will always be a mess!") is rather silly, and we shouldn't expect much help with it.
Just food for thought today...
Breanna
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