The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
My father is quite a character. But not in the usual sense the term is used for.
He is a quiet man. The adage “let my words be few” from the Bible were written with him specifically in mind. For many people it makes him seem mysterious, but for me it was and still is a comfort. Ever since I was a little boy, I knew it was ok to think before I spoke because my dad always did.
But introversion be damned, my dad gave his squad of kids a dinner devotion every day. This went on for years. I remember being bored or interested, often both simultaneously.
Yet one message of his borrowed from a cassette tape of a pastor I don’t know the name of will forever be remembered by me (and likely my brother and sister too).
The message was at least half an hour long and I’m sure he had many profound insights throughout. The only statement I remember him saying, however, was the following: “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
Twenty years later, I wholeheartedly agree.
I’m a big picture guy. I love details too. Often when I listen to a new song, watch a new movie, or read a new book, I am not sure whether I’ll fixate on one line, one scene, one quote, or whether I’ll focus on an overall theme. A part of the excitement of any consumption of art is not knowing what feeling it will evoke. Sometimes, in fact, being such a big feels guy myself, I will miss concrete information in a lyric or a line because I’m dwelling on my emotional reaction. So focused on how the piece stirred me, I overlook the main thrust of the artist’s intent.
I think we often do this with the story of God. Whether we are deeply moved and/or convicted by a certain passage, we miss the point of the meta narrative.
Quick sidebar: context is still incredibly important. Knowing why a writer wrote the piece, who they wrote it to, why they wrote it to the intended audience is very important to understanding what an individual story or letter or law or poem is saying.
Yet, at the end of the day, we all know the gist of this library of books. We all know why everything changes in the New Testament. We all know what this guy from Nazareth came to tell us about and who He told us He was.
We know it at a head level. We might even give a good response when asked why we believe what we believe.
But believing something in your head is different than trusting something in your heart. Believing in something is far less risky than trusting in someone.
And sometimes I don’t trust that the main thing is, in fact, “the main thing.”
“You just have to trust me.”
This my father said many times throughout my life, with an exponential increase in my teen years. Oh how it annoyed and irritated my younger self.
Trust him? But I needed a bigger allowance for my T-Bell runs with friends.
Trust him? But I needed to stay out till past midnight because that girl was at that party.
Trust him? But I was a broken, grumpy, waste of space emo kid.
Trust is a hard thing in our modern moment. It is dwindling in the political sphere. Crumbling in the dating world. And I think it’s starting to decrease in the spiritual world too.
Millennials are a disenchanted generation. I think we carry this from the residual burn out of our Gen X/baby boomer parents.
Life isn’t, actually, all about working hard. Sometimes you don’t get the picket fence even after 50 hour work weeks. Incomes are on the decline as the rich get wealthier and the poor become further impoverished. Divorce is as prevalent as any time before. The stock market on love is plummeting. And anxiety skyrockets as social media humble bragging becomes the newest form of social “expression.”
Trusting takes time, and the world’s frantic pace seems to swallow every moment and opportunity to trust. Relationships, jobs, even churches are swapped left and right, leaving us to rely solely on the self.
There’s nothing to hang our hat on. There’s no ultimate goal to push toward if our goals are always evolving. There’s no way to keep the main thing the main thing because our world distracts us from what the main thing is.
Yet another breakup. Yet another failure. Yet another “here we are backsliding in lament after the incredible hype up of she’s the one.”
I was meeting with my spiritual director. He’s a man that similarly thinks before he speaks like my dad. This I’ve found to be a mark of the wisest sort of men.
I was reeling in the big feels. “I’m not likable, here’s proof, round four of the past year, maybe God doesn’t care,” etc etc.
He let me go on and on and on. A mark of a person who cares deeply about the person is speaking. My depressing rant ran out of gas. I stared down at the fancy and empty coffee mug.
“Any father would be glad to have their daughter bring you home.”
The feels stopped. Like the wildest of plot twists, everything flipped.
He continued on, reminding me of the way God sees me. The way he sees me. They way most people who know me well see me.
He reminded me of the main thing.
So often I get hung up on what isn’t ultimately ultimate. “If only I had this job,” “if only she had said yes,” “if only this publisher had replied back.”
“If only God made me like that instead.”
Instead of focusing on reality, I get hung up and depressed by what isn’t true. I think “I don’t make a lot of money so my work must not be valuable” or “these people are just nice to me because they have to be.”
I’m diverted from the main quest of life to love God and love people because I don’t love myself and find proof of my unlovability by all the challenges present in my life.
The enemy always wants us to be focused away from the main thing. Being hung up on the side plots of life distracts us from the primary path. The problem is further exacerbated by thinking we have control over side plots or that we are helpless to change them.
He causes us to focus on nonessential things in our lives to block us from focusing on the essential things in the lives of others. He causes us to focus on our own insufficiency, rather than help others in the midst of their insecurities. He causes us to focus on the false idol of the self rather than on the true God whose very essence is selfless.
It may be hard to remember to keep the main thing the main thing, but it’s easy when we remember what the main thing is. Or, rather, who is the main thing.
A God who sees, a God who loves, a God who waits, a God who understands. The main thing is to keep Him the main thing. And then everything else falls into place. Maybe not perfectly, but perfection isn’t needed when we love and our loved by a perfect God.