Secret Service

I turned 30 today. I feel like my soul has aged so much this past year, I’ve been waiting for my age to catch up. Through all the unexpected turns and difficult roads we’ve traveled on, the last year and a half have become moments of intense learning.

One lesson fresh on my mind as I begin my thirties is on the desire to make a difference. When I wrote about making a difference with our lives in Butterfly in Brazil I concluded that for all the small, local, and gradual change we give our lives to, success by Heaven’s yardstick is all about obedience to God. I am beginning to understand not only how true that is, but how that truth ought to change my approach to service.

Here is the gut-level question: is my service really about my fulfillment? In other words, do I serve so I can feel like I am significant, accomplishing my destiny, doing what I was made to do? Is my service driven by a sense of my purpose in life? If that feels uncomfortable and you find yourself reaching for denial, consider how obsessed we are with discovering our strengths, mapping out our personalities, and identifying our spiritual gifts. I have done all of that. And I have found it very helpful. It’s helped me work better and in more healthy way with others. But those self-discoveries can wrongfully become the thing that drives my desire to serve. I can find myself wanting to serve in a certain arena because it maximizes my spiritual potential.

What’s more subtle than the desire to serve as a means of achieving self-actualization is the infatuation with “making a difference.” David Goetz in his insightful and satirizing book Death by Suburb warns of this approach. If we begin in our service with the intent to see results, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Life change is not an instant work. There are no formulas and there are no money-back guarantees. What’s worse is that if we begin our service in order to “make a difference”, we are actually living to create a legacy for ourselves. In other words, we are serving ourselves and calling it service for others.

I think Jesus was well aware of our tendency to use service as a means of self-fulfillment and a way to acquire our own “immortality symbols”, as Goetz calls it. I suspect that’s why Jesus told us when we are giving to the poor, or fasting, or doing any service for the Kingdom, to do it in secret. He modeled it himself by getting up early while it was still dark to go away and pray. Even when he healed the sick, he repeatedly told them not to tell anyone. At several moments, Jesus had a crowd gathered, ready to be his instant mega-church, and he found ways to turn them away—either directly or by launching into an impossibly hard-to-swallow sermon.

This messes with me. What’s worse is that I can’t think of a single Biblical character who prayed that his life would make a difference. I can think of some who asked for God’s help, who even asked that God would remember them after their work was done. But I can’t recall one who wanted his life to matter so much that he launched into the service of God. Jesus, when he called his disciples, didn’t lure them with promises of significance and self-fulfillment. He didn’t say, “Hey Peter, I see your spiritual gifts and I think I can really use a guy like you.” You know what Jesus said when he recruited his leaders? “Take up your cross. Deny yourself. Come, follow me.”

As I turn 30, I want to leave behind my immature impulse to serve God because I want to make a difference. I don’t want to launch into ministry endeavors because I want to feel like I am being used. There is no doubt God gave me the personality and gifts that he did for a reason, and it all fits into a cosmic tapestry of his design. But all of those things are too wonderful for me. It is sufficient for me to serve because he called. I must serve out of obedience. And the best way to make sure that I stay that way is to keep my service a secret. I should never talk about the money I'm giving to missions, the times I fast, the child I sponsor, or any of the good deeds I may or may not do. It may seem more "personal" to leave my name at the bottom of an unexpected random gift, but anonymity will guard my soul. As I learn to keep my service secret, the power of secrecy keeps my service pure.