Do Hero [Stuff]
I saw a meme a couple of weeks ago that has me both inspired and scratching my head. It goes like this. (Edited, because this is a family show.)
“Imagine watching a movie where the main character sat in their room on their phone all day. It would suck, right?
So go do some main character [stuff] with your life.””
Similarly, I saw a Tom Bilyeu quote that goes like this: “If you’re tired, you don’t need rest, you need [stuff] you’re excited about.”
And if you’re a Christian, the Bible makes the bold claim that you have an enemy. In CS Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, he writes that the enemy is content to have you “staring at a dead fire in a cold room.” It’s not even that the enemy will tempt you to something horrible, just the temptation to turn down the lights. Calm down. Slow down. Lay down.
What does “main character [stuff]” look like today? What does Hero [Stuff] look like for the disciple? For those walking out their faith, on the path with Jesus, what does it mean to engage with the day in such a way that keeps the fire going?
I suppose this is where errant activism comes from. That people want to feel like they’re doing Hero [Stuff] with their lives. What is it called? Keyboard activism? Fighting dragons that don’t exist? But we do seek to fight the dragons, because we know there is Hero [Stuff] out there that we’re supposed to be engaged in.
What if you have a moral responsibility to the world to do the things that make you come alive?
Think of one of your heroes of the faith. Moses, Abraham, or Corrie ten Boom. What does it look like if you drop them into your day to live as you today? What do they do? What attitudes do they have? What does the Apostle Paul do if he’s part of your workplace or your family today?
The Bible offers us clues: it’s more blessed to give than to receive. The faith of giving yourself away. The faith of serving. The faith of saying something outside of your comfort zone. The faith to say “thank you” in the face of daunting circumstances. Or to risk deeply with your attitudes, words, and obedience.
Do some Hero [Stuff] today.
___________________________
Excerpt from Screwtape Letters:
“You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked". The Christians describe the Enemy as one "without whom Nothing is strong". And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts, Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE”