Efficiency & Immaturity

While Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, a woman approached him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume. She poured it on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw it, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked.

— Matthew 26:6-8

This weekend brings the last Sunday of Advent; the waiting is almost over. Do you feel it?

I've been quite busy this month which has made me eager for the break. My normal rhythm of reflection and contemplation has taken a backseat to getting tasks done, but Christmas means we get to slow down. Thus, like a young child, I'm quite excited for Christmas and can feel the slow-moving clock that accompanies anticipation. If I'm honest, my excitement has less to do with the birth of Christ than the cessation of work, something I want to reckon with during the break.

How about you? What is your experience? What are you excited about? What are you anticipating?

EFFICIENCY AND NATURE

As you reflect on those things, I want to turn the conversation to efficiency. Anyone in business is forced to deal with efficiency (or more likely inefficiencies).

Making sure we define our terms is important so let's start there. Here's a definition for efficiency from Investopedia:

"The term efficiency can be defined as the ability to achieve an end goal with little to no waste, effort, or energy…Put simply, something is efficient if nothing is wasted, and all processes are optimized."

What emotions does that definition evoke in you?

How does it align with your view of what it means to be human?

I have concluded that concern for efficiency in most of life is a sign of immaturity. Does that feel like a stretch or a non-sequitur? My contention is that a mature person growing in Christlikeness who has entered the second half of life and is doing deep inner work and is loving God and neighbor and has the capacity to be fully present to people and is walking in the Spirit is putting efficiency way down the list of priorities.

Show me a place in the gospels in which Jesus was concerned about being efficient?

As we slow down around the holidays and spend time with those we love, let's recognize how antithetical efficiency is to relationships.

CHALLENGE

Here's the problem or challenge...we live in a mechanistic world organized around efficiency—and we enjoy the benefits, for the most part—which means we are blind to how much it has infected our worldview. It is the water in which we swim.

If we are dealing with machines, efficiency is a good thing. I want my car to burn as little energy as possible while transporting me where I want to go as quickly as possible. I want my stove and fridge and HVAC to be energy efficient and save me money.

But what happens when we start moving from machines to people?

I enjoy ordering something from Amazon in the morning and having it arrive in the afternoon. I am glad I can go to the store and find what I need whenever I want. How does that happen? It happens by making people work like machine parts. We have moved from machines in the above paragraph to treating people like part of the machine in this one, and that is a problem.

We see this in our language, in our metaphors. We speak of processes in which people are involved running "like clockwork" or a "well-oiled machine". Do you appreciate being a cog?

Then, we take another step down the road and start treating people like machines or machine parts. An obvious example of this is your friendly public school. Students sit at desks in rows and respond to a schedule triggered by bells. This is not education; this is training to become part of a machine.

The next step is how we spend our time. "Time is money." This impacts relationships in which we more often than not spend time with people according to a schedule rather than according to the need or connection.

Lastly, so-called social media takes it to the extreme with most/much of our interactions involving a screen and words and pictures rather than in-person connection.

This all happens so subtly we are oblivious and move through it like a leaf on a flowing river. Make no mistake, we are being catechized towards dehumanizing mechanization.

Can you feel it? Can you see it? If you've seen the Matrix film, you have a good picture of becoming no more than numbers flowing on a screen.

Merry Christmas! What a happy post as we head towards Christmas!?

My goal is not to discourage or be a doomsayer but to awaken. Advent is a clarion call against the machine.

Have you noticed nature has no straight lines? Nature is inefficient, full of redundancies. God is never in a hurry. As mentioned, Jesus is inefficient. The Bible is over 1000 pages describing what it means to be human, and efficiency is not part of it.

Now, as I've been pondering the idea of nature and inefficiency, I wonder if it is a result of the Fall? Did the Garden of Eden have straight lines before Genesis 3? Is inefficiency a result of sin? Will the new heaven and new earth be efficient? What do you think?

But someone may raise the issue of time limitations? Time is a limited resource and must be treated as such. This requires a bent towards efficiency, doesn't it?

SOLUTION?

No, but the struggle is real and requires a deep awareness of what is happening and intentionality in the opposite direction. I think this is a case in which deconstruction is an applicable term.

One step I have mentioned in the past is to do a metaphor audit. Language is important; we become our metaphors. Most of us use a variety of metaphors without even realizing it, but given our world, we tend to emphasize mechanistic metaphors. Forcing ourselves to use organic metaphors will make a bigger difference than we realize. The difference between seeing life with people like a clock or machine versus a garden or forest is significant. Consider how you treat people when your picture is a machine versus a garden. We are talking about orders of magnitude in how my attitude and behavior changes according to which metaphor is internalized and assumed. I know I sound like a broken record with this, but it can't be over-stressed.

Again, the problem is that we move from a context in which efficiency is good—machines—to one in which it is harmful, namely anything involving human relationships, and we do it by degrees making us blind to it like the proverbial frog in the slowly heating water pot. As we recognize what is happening, we can work against it.

One vital place for this to happen is in our churches and communities. The more the church is run like a business, the more we hear talk of efficiency to the detriment of the souls involved. Note that I am not saying we should be purposely wasteful as if our only two options are efficiency and waste. A church is very capable of being wise with resources like money and facilities without making efficiency the foundational value. The key is Biblical, Spirit-filled wisdom rather than business-principles. Jesus praised the woman for "wasting" the perfume on him and told parables about making the best use of our talents/resources. The point is that a Biblical picture means that at times we will look totally inefficient and wasteful, and at other times we will be as tight as Scrooge's fists. The rhyme or reason will be hard to understand other than the guidance of the Holy Spirit through a group of godly leaders whose values are aligned with God’s.

Ministry is about deep connection and love and compassion and grace and mercy and justice and none of those things are better through efficiency. May our communities be places in which people feel seen and heard and safe. May our celebrations be lavish and may our people be generous. May gratitude prevail. May we readily rejoice and celebrate and grieve and mourn with those doing the same. Of course, this doesn't just happen because we want it to, but it definitely does not happen when efficiency is a primary concern.

ADVENT/CHRISTMAS OPPORTUNITY

I am writing this now because Advent and Christmas are a wonderful opportunity to push into God's inefficiency. Everything about Christmas was wrong from a business standpoint. Jesus was born to a poor couple in a small town away from the centers of power at a time in history when "spreading the word" was not easy. I could continue, but we've all heard this before.

Let's join God in being lavish this Christmas. Sit with each other longer. Take off your watch and put away your electronics. Look people in the eyes. Give long hugs. Linger in conversation around the dinner table. Laugh and cry together. Play games. Be purposely inefficient. Waste time with those you love and then reflect on how it felt.

Joy to the World, the Lord is come! God is among us. He loves us. He's good. He's holding us, and he's not in a hurry. 

"The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency."

— Aldous Huxley