A Wal-mart life?

"It takes so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the courage to pay the price." Morris L. West

Is there truth in this statement? What is the price of a self-examined life? What fuels our paralysis and keep us from accepting the best becoming "fully human"?

The fear of self-discovery. It is frightening to really look at who we are and examine why we do what we do? Just looking requires us to "pay the price" actually changing may be incomprehensible?

Accepting the "Wal-Mart life" is a much safer and far less expensive option. It's a bargain, a blue light special...it's polyester instead of cashmere. The "Wal-Mart" life is the way it's always been done; it is a life with no surprises. It is finding yourself doing what you do simply because you do it. The skeletons appear to stay in the closet and we like it that way. If you're angry you stay angry, if your sad you stay sad, accepting defeat, embracing powerlessness, romancing the stone. It's the equivalent of walking around with a bag on your head and the "christian" community accepts, embraces this way of living.

Christ came to offer us the best life, life to the fullest: to save us from a broken and sinful world. We accept this theology in our churches, we accept this theology through our creeds and speak often of how this world is in need of redemption but we are far less willing to accept or apply this to ourselves, to our families, to our relationships. It is easier to believe this gospel is for "them" that we already "got it." To accept that we still need to be redeemed would mean redeeming the way we respond to the people we love or to redeem the broken way we interpret the world. It would mean that we would have to accept our own brokenness on a much deeper level and redemption would require change.

The price of change is too high or so we believe. Change requires the risk of opening up to someone else, the risk of revealing ourselves to another. The risk of being perceived...the risk of being seen for all that we are...broken. The fear of risk blinds us to the reality that redemption leads us to a cashmere life; the life that Christ offers. Right now, right here on earth...not waiting for eternity but starting now.

Anything less than taking the risk is accepting the "Wal-Mart" life...choosing to have full shopping carts of "valuelessness" instead of holding in our hands just what is quality. We walk around wanting to believe we've got it all, wanting to believe this is the best that can be hoped for yet becoming avid fans of life's "What Not To Wear" and wishing that we too could be in the 360 degree mirror...but knowing the price would be too high....