Living an Unbalanced Life: Reordering Loves, Reorienting Attention, and Responding to God in Every Moment
Introduction: Why Unbalanced Living?
Imagine your life as a pie chart. Each “slice” of the pie represents an area of your life—God, family, friendships, recreation, work, and so on. How much of the chart does God occupy? How do you decide when you’ve given enough of your life to God?
This exercise highlights the tension involved in trying to create a “balanced” life. Intuitively, we know God doesn’t just ask for the biggest portion of our lives—he isn’t asking for fifty-one percent. He requires everything we are and have. Our devotion to God is unbalanced.
For instance, in Deuteronomy 6:5, God calls the Israelites to total devotion’. They are to love him with all their hearts, souls, and strength. These terms express complete devotion:
Heart- In the Old Testament, the heart was not the seat of the emotions, but of the intellect. One “thought” with one’s heart. Loving God with one’s whole heart means keeping the Lord at the forefront of their thoughts and attention.
Soul- The Hebrew term often translated “soul” is nephesh. While we are accustomed to thinking of the soul as an intangible part of our being separate from our physical bodies, the Hebrew conception didn’t separate the body and the soul. In most cases, the soul (or nephesh) refers to a person’s entire being.
Strength- The word translated “strength” is the same word translated “very” in Genesis 1:31 (e.g., “very good”). It is normally used as a modifier that intensifies a particular quality or characteristic. In its use in Deuteronomy 6, it likely refers to one’s “muchness”—to all the physical and material strength one can muster. As such, it is not just a question of how much you can squat or deadlift, but of how many people and resources are under your charge as well.
God requires unreserved loyalty (or love). We are to hold nothing back. This vision challenges notions of balance and prioritization. God doesn’t ask us to live a balanced life. Quite the opposite—he calls us to a radically unbalanced life committed to Him. All we are and have is to be dedicated to the Lord. Giving most or some won’t do.
So how does that work? How can we have other responsibilities and people in our lives when God requires all we are and have? How can we operate in such an unbalanced way? Before addressing those questions, let’s consider what I’ll refer to as the myths of balance and prioritization.
The Myths of Balance and Prioritization
In this section, I’ll be using the term “myth” in a particular way. It is worth clarifying because myths are often associated with fiction. While myths may include fictional elements, it would be a mistake to think of myths being completely detached from reality. Myths speak to the more symbolic aspects of reality—those aspects that give reality meaning. They don’t lend themselves to empirical measurement. They convey important truths about different aspects of reality.
The myths of balance and prioritization refer to a symbolic story that humans have constructed to reflect (a) the importance of the various arenas of life within which we interact and (b) our inability to give any single area sufficient attention because of our limited capacity, time, and energy. The myth of balance reflects certain values that many humans hold including, but not necessarily limited to:
Productivity- The importance of work and of contributing to society.
Family- The significance of having and loving a spouse and of raising “good” children
Recreation- The need for rest, relaxation, and experience (often construed as a “reward” for one’s work)
Friendships- The desire for meaningful relationships with others who can offer encouragement, support, and constructive criticism.
These and a variety of other values are to be held “in balance.” We are told that we need to arrange our lives so that we can be productive, have a family, enjoy life, and build relationships. Our goal is to maintain a sense of balance between work, family, recreation, friendships, etc.
The myth of balance gives way to the myth of prioritization. There are, inevitably, times when we simply can’t give each area the attention it is due. Pursuing a promotion or trying to build a business requires a great deal of attention. Such activities require us to prioritize “work” and productivity. Our family, friendships, and hobbies get less of our time and attention. They are deprioritized.
You may be asking, “How would we manage life in any other way? Don’t we need to prioritize at some point?” Of course, we do. We have to make decisions about how to spend our time. However, the myths of balance and prioritization can’t be the governing paradigm Christians use to order our lives. It can’t be the governing paradigm because it runs counter to the biblical mandate to love God with all we are and have. When we prioritize, we can’t do so based on our own interests and ambitions. Instead, our non-negotiable priority in every situation is to point to and glorify God. As such, it is unlike any other priority because it is all-encompassing—we don’t finish it and move on to something else. Everything we do is “nested” within the glorification of God (1 Cor 10:23-33).
Think of a Russian nesting doll. You have a large doll that houses a series of increasingly smaller dolls inside of it. The smaller dolls are distinct from the larger dolls—they differ in size and, in some cases, design—but the shape of the smaller dolls conforms to that of the largest doll.
The image of the nesting doll offers a different way of thinking about how the various aspects of our lives “fit” with our unreserved commitment to God. Our families, friendships, hobbies, work, etc., are “nested” within our commitment to glorify God. We don’t section one area of life off as if God has no claim on it. We are integrated beings. When one part goes, the rest go with it.
If we are to love God with all we are and have, what needs to change? How does the “nesting” paradigm change the way we think about our interactions with God, others, and the world? How does it change the way we think about ourselves? In the following sections, we will address some of the activities associated with nesting and offer some initial thoughts about how we might reorder our loves, reorient our attention, and faithfully respond to God in light of God’s call to unreserved love.
Reordering Loves
To understand how to reorder our loves, we need to understand how they are disordered in the first place. While we could point to any number of morally corrupt practices (e.g., theft, murder, sexual assault of various sorts, greed, etc.), doing so can mask the underlying dynamics of disordering loves: loving God’s creation on our own terms and for our own purposes.
Rightly ordered love emerges from our love for God. When Jesus identifies the greatest commandment as loving God with all we are and have and the second as loving our neighbors, he grounds the law in the ultimate and eternal. We cannot love our neighbors rightly apart from loving God with all we are and have. In fact, loving our neighbors is an extension of our love for God—the one (love of neighbor) is nested in the other (love of God). As Augustine notes,
He means that no part of our life is to be unoccupied, and to afford room, as it were, for the wish to enjoy some other object, but that whatever else may suggest itself to us as an object worthy of love is to be borne into the same channel in which the current of our affections flows. Whoever, then, loves his neighbor aright, ought to urge upon him that he too should love God with his whole heart, and soul, and mind. For in this way, loving his neighbor as himself, a man turns the whole current of his love both for himself and his neighbor into the channel of the love of God, which suffers no stream to be drawn off from itself by whose diversion its own volume would be diminished.
(For a discussion of misdirected love and those who have not placed their faith in Christ, see “How Do Non-Christians Love”).
Christians still struggle with disordered loves. Confessions of sin is a mark of the Christian community because (1) we are not immune from disordered love and (2) we are so committed to trueing ourselves to Christ that we are willing to admit our failings even when doing so results in negative consequences. When our loves become disordered, it is not necessarily because we are loving something unworthy of love but because our love for lovable things overshadows our love for God and begins to direct the course of our lives.
Consider, for instance, an ideal like justice. Justice is “good.” It is part of what God’s people “seek” as they turn away from evil and back toward God (Isa 1:17; cf. Mic 6:8; Matt 23:23). However, even justice can captivate us in a way that our loves become disordered. In Thinking Christian, I suggest that some of the journalistic practices done in the pursuit of justice are distortions and perversions of a sort because the pursuit of justice becomes an end in itself. As I suggest, “the quest for accountability or ‘justice’ [both “goods”] within the church is not an authorization to use any means necessary to bring deviant members to heel.”
Pursuing accountability and justice is appropriate but seeking justice cannot come at the expense of pointing to and glorifying God. To put it differently, when we pursue justice, we must also consider the ways our pursuit of justice may add to the damage done by the original offense and cause God’s name to be reviled (1 Tim 6:1; Tit 2:5). Our loves become disordered when we pursue justice—or any other “good”—for its own sake rather than for God’s glory.
Reorienting Attention
In broad terms, we may say that attention involves directing one or more of our faculties (e.g., sight, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling) and/or mental and physical activities toward someone or something. It is a way of orienting ourselves toward someone or something. Paying attention isn’t something that happens in isolation from other cognitive and physical activities. Instead, we pay attention by altering the manner in which we engage in other mental and physical activities.
For instance, think about driving down the highway. There may be more in your actual field of vision (what you are seeing) than what you end up attending to (what you “look” at). It is possible to register the fact that you just passed a mile marker without knowing the number on the mile marker. If you don’t need to know where you are at a given moment, you are less likely to focus on the mile marker. When you need to know, you will do more than register the mile marker—you will attend to it (i.e., look at it in a way that reflects its current relevance).
The following biblical examples also illustrate this general understanding of attention. Note that “attention” translates different words in the verses sited. The transliterations of the Hebrew words have been included in parentheses and italics.
“The keeper of the prison paid no attention (roeh) to anything that was in Joseph’s charge, because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed” (Gen 39:23).
In this instance, attention was “unnecessary” because of the trust that the “keeper of the prison” had in all that Joseph was doing. He did not need to direct his faculties or actions toward Joseph’s work. In this case, it isn’t that Joseph’s work was irrelevant, but that the keeper of the prison knew the significant work Joseph was doing would get done. Joseph was trustworthy, so the keeper of the prison could attend to other matters.
“But whoever did not pay attention (lev) to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field” (Exod 9:21).
This verse is particularly interesting when we consider that those who “did not pay attention” are contrasted with those who “feared the word of the Lord” (Exod 9:20). As we will see below, “fear of the Lord” and certain variants involve attention. In this context, God warned Pharaoh of a “very heavy hail” (9:18) that would come the following day. Those who paid attention to (“feared”) God’s warning brought their animals and servants in from the fields. They recognized God’s word as relevant and responded accordingly. Those who did not pay attention (i.e., disregarded God’s word), took no action.
“Pay careful attention (shamar) to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him” (Exod 23:21).
Paying attention to the Lord’s instruction is similar to “obeying his voice”. It implies that the Israelites are more than “aware” of God’s law. They don’t just have a working knowledge of God’s commands. They respect and revere the commands as wisdom. As such, they act on God’s instruction. It guides their behavior constantly.
“…that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons pay close attention (shamar) to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel’” (1 Kgs 2:4).
David, who is close to death (1 Kgs 2:1-2), urges Solomon to “keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies…” (1 Kgs 2:3). He then reiterates what the Lord promised to do “if your sons pay close attention to their way” (2:4). As in Exod 23:21 (which also uses the Hebrew term shamar), we see that “paying attention” involves obeying the Lord’s instructions.
There are many other references to “attention” in the Old Testament. This small selection of entries suggests that attention, particularly when used as a translation for shamar, involves an obedient response to the Lord. More generally, we may say that “paying attention” expresses a sort of alertness to someone or something deemed relevant. Attention generally involves some action, which is aligned with that relevant someone or something.
When we think about reorienting our attention, we may think of it as trueing our live to God as a reference point—actively seeking to align ourselves with God. We are not simply becoming more aware of God but allowing that awareness to shape our behavior. Reorienting our attention is crucial to learning to respond to God from within a given situation instead of responding to that situation apart from God.
(For more on reorienting your attention, read “How Do We Reorient Our Attention So That We Glorify God.”)
Responding to God in Every Moment
Once we reorder our lives and reorient our attention, we still have one additional step to take: we need to respond faithfully to God in every moment. Responding to God from within a given situation instead of responding to the situation apart from God lies at the core of faithful living. There are always times when obedience won’t appear to make practical sense. Still, obedience is always the best choice we can make in any given situation.
So, what does it mean to respond to God? Responding to God emerges from a process of relevance realization. According to Vervaeke and colleagues, relevance realization is the process of making sense of “an ill-defined and open-ended world—in order to survive, thrive, and evolve.” It is an activity that every “limited living being” uses to “make sense of its large world.” Relevance realization requires us to “constantly play different approaches and strategies against each other in a process that iteratively evaluates progress toward a problem solution (toward reaching a particular goal).”
While current relevance realization research is helpful in many respects, it makes certain assumptions that bracket God out of the picture. For instance, when Vervaeke and colleagues discuss relevance realization, they suggest that it is analogous to evolutionary fitness noting, “Neither ‘fitness’ nor ‘relevance’ have any universal attributes: there is no trait that renders you fit in all environments, nor is there any factor that is relevant across all possible situations.” This last assertion regarding the absence of “any factor that is relevant across all possible situations” is an assumption that does not square with the reality of the omnipresent Triune God. God is the “factor” (so to speak) “that is relevant across all possible situations.” As such, responding to God involves recognizing him as infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor in any given situation. While this should prompt us to respond to God in obedience, there are a range of responses—some obedient and others not—available to us.
When we immerse relevance realization within a theological framework, we may say that the “different approaches and strategies” we “play…against each other” involve at least the following three options:
Rejecting God’s wisdom and embracing the world’s tactics
Scripture describes this first option in terms of rebellion—we choose to live according to the flesh rather than the Spirit (Gal 5:16-21). Often, however, this first option can seem quite justified. Well-meaning people can press biblical and theological language into the service of their own agendas and end up thinking they are doing God’s will while adopting the ways of the world (For more on pressing the truth into the service of falsehood see “Co-Opting Christ”)
When we reject God’s wisdom and embrace the world’s tactics, we deem God irrelevant. God is no longer our point of reference. We don’t index our behavior to God. Instead, we respond to our desires in the moment. We pursue our own ambitions. No matter how noble those ambitions may seem (e.g., pursuing justice, caring for the poor), pursuing them apart from God makes it far more difficult, if not impossible, for us to point to and glorify Him.
Acting in ignorance of God and his ways.
This second option emerges from our limited understanding of who God is and what he is doing. In our ignorance, we can make better or worse decisions—decisions that align to some degree with the good, true, and beautiful—but our ignorance limits our ability to discern a proper path. The so-called “Tower of Babel” narrative (for my take on the Tower of Babel listen to this episode of the Thinking Christian podcast) is likely a good example of this sort of ignorance as is the “Pharaoh who knew not Joseph” (Exod 1:8).
When we make choices out of ignorance, we aren’t necessarily in active rebellion against God. Still, we may end up making choices because we don’t understand who God is, what He can (or will) do, or when He will do them. Abraham’s liaison with Hagar is a good example of this sort of decision-making. God has told Abraham that he will have a biological descendent. However, because Sarah is old and barren, neither Abraham nor Sarah thinks she will be the mother. As such, Abraham uses a surrogate (Hagar) to secure a descendent. After Ishmael is born, God clarifies that the child who will carry on the covenant will come from Abraham and Sarah.
As much as we might want to critique Abraham’s actions with Hagar, the Bible does not do so. While tensions arise between Ishmael and Isaac prompting Abraham to send Ishmael and Hagar away, this incident appears more as a negative consequence than a punishment for immoral behavior. In any case, in having a child with Hagar, Abraham is not rebelling against God. He simply doesn’t know what he is doing because he is in the process of learning what God can do.
Choosing between a variety of faithful actions as we live in the presence of the Triune God.
This third option is more what we see in Paul’s discussions about rights (for more on rights in the political realm see “Is Christian Participation a Sacred Duty or a Civil Right?”) and faithful adaptation in the New Testament (Rom 14:1-15:7; 1 Cor 9:1-27). When we seek to choose between a variety of faithful actions, we still recognize God as infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor even though we may not know exactly what to do. Learning to respond to God does not mean we will know exactly what to do in any given situation—it means we only consider options that align with our goal of glorifying the Triune God.
There are numerous biblical examples illustrating times when God’s people respond to Him from within a situation as opposed to responding to the situation. In 1 Samuel 24, for example, David opts to spare Saul’s life even though it seemed—at least to David’s men (1 Sam 24:4)—that God had delivered Saul into David’s hands. Rather than killing Saul, however, David exercises restraint. He does not want it to appear that he has taken the throne of Israel through military might, but that God has given David the throne without David acting against the “Lord’s anointed” (1 Sam 24:6).
(For more on responding to God, read “How to Recognize God” or download “Making Everyday Decisions for God’s Glory”)
Living Life Unbalanced
Discipleship is key to living life unbalanced. Based on the Great Commission, discipleship involves two movements: commitment and education. Baptism represents commitment. When Paul speaks about baptism in Romans, he notes that we were baptized into Christ’s death describing baptism as a type of burial (Rom 6:4). We may understand baptism as a symbolic act of committing one’s life to Christ. Essentially, we align ourselves with Christ completely knowing that having “been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom 6:5).
This commitment is essential because it involves us taking on the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We commit to represent the Triune God—and only the Triune God—faithfully. We bear no other name. Even so, our initial commitment isn’t something we fully understand from day one. We need to learn to live under the authority of Christ.
While we often think in terms of learning about God, discipleship requires us to learn to follow Christ. We can ignore “learning about”—we just can’t stop there. We must move on toward obedience. We have to learn to live under the authority of the Triune God.
So, how is discipleship related to an unbalanced life? First, the commitment associated with discipleship is singular. We are baptized in the name of the Triune God and no other. As Paul notes in 1 Corinthians, Christians are not baptized in “the name of Paul” (1 Cor 1:13)—or, by extension, anyone else. In baptism we put our lives in the hand of God alone and commit to true ourselves to Him only.
Second, the “educational” aspect of discipleship is continuous. It is never finished. Learning to obey isn’t about a minimum standard we need to meet. We are constantly seeking to set our own desires and ambitions aside so that all we are and have is dedicated to following the Lord (i.e., living an unbalanced life).
Unbalanced living is not something we just adopt. It is something we commit to living, but it isn’t something we know how to do intuitively. It is something we need to learn. We have to learn how to live out the commitment we’ve already made.
Conclusion
The Christian life is unbalanced. We aren’t called to “fit God in” to all of our other activities. We don’t give God enough and then move on to other things. We love God with all we are and all we have all the time. We do so by learning to live under Christ’s authority, which involves reordering our loves, reorienting our attention, and responding faithfully to God from within whatever situation we might find ourselves.
There is no shortcut to living life unbalanced. It requires us to challenge our assumptions about how the world works—more specifically, it requires us to allow God’s word to transform us. Throughout the Bible, however, we find some broad frameworks that can help us as we seek to defy the world and follow Christ. Consider the following verses:
Don’t allow your God-given capacities to overshadow the God who gave you those capacities (Deut 8:17-18).
Avoid influences that would draw you away from God (Ps 1:1) while learning to take pleasure in following the Lord’s instructions (Ps 1:2).
Develop a strong understanding of Christ so that you are not led astray by human speculation (Col 2:8).
Remain faithful even when doing so brings suffering (1 Pet 2:19; Rev 2:26).
The unbalanced life is both demanding and rewarding. As we surrender ourselves to God, we open ourselves up to opportunities for glorifying God and building his kingdom beyond anything we could ever ask or think. Let’s commit to discipleship and learn to live life unbalanced.
(For more on discipleship see “Why the Church Needs to Get Serious about Discipleship”)
