Live Not By Life Hacks
what Joel Osteen + deconstructed Christians have in common
This letter is free for you to read, but it wasn’t free for me to produce. If you’re interested in reading more letters from me + other guest posters, I would be honored if you would prayerfully consider upgrading your subscription. This publication is only possible because of our generous full subscribers. Full subscribers get access to our entire archive, (at least) two extra essays a month, our summer read along, our monthly booklists, quarterly ask-me-anything sessions, our upcoming Advent podcast, and more.
I was scrolling Instagram the other day, and to be honest, I need to do less of that. It’s my birthday, and here is my 32-year-old resolution: scroll the ‘gram much, much less.
Someone Catholic-adjacent was sharing about how they didn’t believe in a teaching of the church (but using the kind of justice-lite lingo so popular on social media to mask that fact) because it wasn’t making them feel fulfilled. It was, in their view, harmful for people to not make this choice that the church has deemed sinful. It would be dooming themselves to a life of despair and sadness and pain, and--
What kind of God would let you be so unhappy?
Friends, I was taken aback. But I shouldn’t have been.
This sweet God of ours, the one I believe in to my bones, has let me be quite unhappy in quite significant ways. This God has let me walk over hot coals with no shoes on, has raised his eyebrows as I threw temper tantrums in my car and my closet and my mom’s house.
I don’t think it’s that God doesn’t care that I’m unhappy—it’s that there’s more than one way of looking at pain.
CS Lewis writes in “Meditation in a Toolshed” about a person looking at a beam of light in a small outdoor shed1.
“I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
Which is the true or “valid” experience, CS Lewis asks? Looking at something, or looking along it? Once you’ve stepped into the light from the toolshed, and begun looking at things through that perspective, you see the world by the light instead of just seeing the light. It transforms every single thing you lay your eyes on.
Including deep, excruciating pain.
I went through an oddly long Joel Osteen phase when I was about 20 (don’t ask) and binge-listened a bunch of his podcast episodes. This was 12 years ago or so; he was an early podcaster and I was an early listener. I loved his health-and-wealth message: all I had to do was love God and follow the commandments and then, of course, God would bless me! It was similar to Jinger Duggar’s childhood vibes—do X, Y, and Z, and all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things shall be well.2
Since the great unearthing of 2020, I’ve seen people on the wildly different end of the Christian spectrum do the same thing. I don’t think this is anything new; these types of theological debates have likely been going on since Peter and Paul were arguing about who could sit where. It’s this idea that what God really wants is for me to be happy and comfortable and safe. That’s his main concern. As long as I’m living in a way that makes me happy, God is happy. God is love and love is happiness and that’s really all there is to say, isn’t there?
Joel Osteen and many people who identify as deconstructed Christians3 tend to tell me the same thing: that God, above all else, is concerned with my happiness and inner peace. God would not ask me to do a hard thing. God would not ask me to endure any suffering with patience4. God would not ask me to go through pain or social isolation or a bunch of people on the internet being mad at me. God would never ask you to do that. What kind of God would let you be so unhappy?
Our culture is constantly helping us do things easier, better, more quickly. Hacks for making dinner; hacks for getting our kids to sleep. Hacks for cleaning our bathrooms (vacuum it first! Guys, this changed my life!) Hacks for contouring our faces and crossing more off our to-do list and getting healthier faster. Hacks; hacks as far as the eyes can see.
But there’s no hack for a Christian life.
There’s no 5-step listicle.
There’s no shortcut, blueprint, or way to make it any easier.
The Christian life is actually just…really, really hard sometimes.
2 Corinthians 11 23-29: “I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received . . . the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods,once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?”
Damn, Paul. We get it.
God is intimately involved in all things, but he doesn’t control our every move. He has given human beings freedom to wreak absolute havoc on one another. He did not create death, but he allows it to occur. Havoc was wreaked on Paul.
Could you imagine if we just said to him God would never ask you to do that?
Any religion or thought-group that’s pulling you towards a simple, easy, danger-free life is a liar. Because I have some really, really bad news for you: it’s coming. The positive cancer diagnoses and the car crashes and the heartbreak and the unjust employer and the hurricane that rips your new roof off its shingles; it is all coming. There’s no hack to keep it away. God is not your little superstition, running around protecting you from The Bad Things because you said the right prayers.
And maybe that’s what we’re really tired of.
We’re sick of being told that it would be different if we only did X, Y, and Z. Of being told that there’s ways to avoid the hard shit.
Bill Gothard and Joel Osteen would say it has to do with the amount of time you spend in prayer or the length of your tweed skirt at their church services. Many Christians on the ‘gram would say it has to do with where you go to church and the need to find one that’s more inclusive or kinder or less stuffy, or maybe just skip the church thing all together and go on a walk instead. But suffering is coming for every single one of us. You can either look at the beam of light, or look along it. Christianity is not where suffering never occurs; it’s where suffering is transformed.
And so this, then, is my real 32-year-old resolution: to stop attempting to live by hacks. To greet suffering as an old friend instead of a reason for or against God’s existence. And to step into the beam.
Paul had more to say after listing his resume of beatings:
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”
On My Nightstand
The Great Divorce by CS Lewis: Man, 2023 has just been my Year of Lewis. I listened to this on audio while cleaning out my closets and absolutely loved it. It’s a parable about a group of people in purgatory going on a “field trip” and if that sounds like a weird concept, don’t let it freak you out. I also highly recommend the audio version; there are a ton of characters and having it read aloud with the different voices was just really enjoyable.
To Crawl Inside: Speaking of suffering, I loved this piece by Laura Fanucci on realizing the suffering of others. “But even empathy has its existential limits. We cannot go where the other goes. Even when we long to stretch across the divide, those who are safe or healthy remain on the opposite shore. It is counterintuitive to keep taking one step beyond fear, convincing our animal bodies that we can draw close to deep suffering.”
How a Small-Town Feud in Kansas Sent a Shock Through American Journalism: A really interesting piece on how a tiny newspaper in Kansas set off big questions about the first amendment. I love small-town deep dives!
Friends, we still have a spot left on our upcoming Poland trip! If you feel like joining us in Warsaw and Krakow in a few weeks (having Mass at the church where JP2 was baptized on his feast day—eek!), please come along! Sign up here.
In case you missed these Letters:
Shiny Happy All of Us - for subscribers
Not Attached, Not Indifferent - for subscribers
Why Are Women So Sick? - for everyone
Would you consider sharing this newsletter?
Almost 100% of my newsletter growth comes from recommendations from readers. This includes people sharing both the newsletter itself and the individual articles I write. Chances are that if you’ve made it this far, you care about women and the church and know others who would enjoy Letters From a Catholic Feminist. Taking just a few seconds to forward or share on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook can make a huge difference.
I am going to warn you right now that there is some non-PC language in this essay that is not okay and that we know in 2023 shouldn’t be used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich
Look, everyone’s on a journey. I just think what you *reconstruct* isn’t talked about enough. I enjoyed this piece about the deconstruction movement within Catholicism.
https://www.bible.com/bible/116/1PE.2.19-24.NLT#
This is beautiful. Happy birthday, Claire!
My multi-denominational family and I did a reading group on The Great Divorce this summer. I love how CS Lewis is claimed by every denomination because I'm always looking for ways to create unity and bridge the gaps in our theological differences. I think suffering is also one of those ways and it is too bad that more people don't see it for the gift that it can be. (Or maybe see that a theology of suffering is a way to get through it.) I was reading about the fentanyl crisis and how it was really about pain and how there is more reported pain in the world, except maybe in Mexico where Catholicism and it's theology of suffering (and this is a paraphrasing of the article) are so embedded in the culture that less pain is reported there. It was just a fascinating look. Now that I think about it, I didn't read it, it was reported on an NPR podcast. Anyway Happy belated.