Your Religion is What You Do With Your Solitude
Usually I’m really good at skimming over great spiritual truths. But for some reason when I read that sentence from Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods, it stopped me in my tracks.
My immediate thought: My religion is ministry and the internet.
That’s what I do and think about it in my spare quiet moments.
If I have a gap in my day, I check email then Twitter.
At night, while I ‘relax’ I’m reading ministry blogs and thinking through our ministry.
Tim Keller unpacks the idea a little more in Counterfeit Gods (read an excerpt of the book here):
There’s a quote by Archbishop William Temple:
“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.”
I had to think about that for about three years before I figured it out.
What does he mean? He says, “When you don’t have to think of anything, when your mind isn’t being taken to think by the environment…” (in other words you’re not at work, there’s nothing that’s taking hold of your mind… when you’re standing on a street corner waiting for someone or you’re in a place where you don’t have anything to think about)
“…where does your mind go? What does your mind habitually go to? What do you most like to think about? What do you most enjoy daydreaming about? What gives you the most comfort to fantasize about?”
And he says, “That’s your God. Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” It’s a profound statement.
I haven’t quite diagnosed what this means practically for me.
Am I replacing the common male idol of “career” with “ministry”? Seeking to find life and recognition in ministry success?
And what am I looking for on email and Twitter? Not sure what this thirst for “the new” means. Obviously it shows a discontent with the eternal.
How about you?
What do you do with your solitude?
In what ways has ministry become your religion?
photo courtesy of pmarkham
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