His Friends: Abba

"Sometimes I'll just be sitting in the prayer room, scrolling on my phone, waiting for my shift to end." I appreciated the honesty of a full-time missionary at a 24/7 prayer house. I know I'm supposed to want God's presence, but sometimes even five minutes of prayer feels like too long.

I looked out at everyone singing and praising God. For me, silence felt more honest. After yelling at my family on the way to church, I felt disqualified. I needed to put myself in a time-out for at least a day or two before I could talk to God again. I knew that, as he looked down on me, he was severely disappointed. How could I be a Christian minister if I couldn't go to church without losing my temper?

In Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, he wrote that he "conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time..." He kept a notebook with his thirteen preferred virtues and a grid to mark when he fell short. The commitment to chastity didn't keep him from having an illegitimate son or affairs in Paris. But most critics challenged his effort for another reason: he wanted to be virtuous because it benefited him. I understand where Ben was coming from. I often think that being good is the best way to get God to like me.

As I've listened to my secular friends, I get the sense that for many of them, love is the highest virtue. If something is loving, it's automatically good. If it's love, there's no higher authority that can question what's being done. It sounds like "Follow your heart," "love is love," "you do you," and "love wins." It sounds good. But somehow, it keeps turning "love" into whatever I want it to mean.

#blessed. It's the default caption for photos of new cars, new houses, new jobs, or sunsets. The word has even escaped the parameters of kitschy wall art and metastasized into "2 blessed 2 be stressed" memes featuring Patrick Star. But #blessed was never meant to be a way of bragging about our better-than-you circumstances.