A pair of excerpts from The Mantra of Jabez by Douglas Jones, a goofy and ever sarcastic parody of the popular The Prayer of Jabez.
A woman confronts the lead character (who is taking his delight in spreading and repeating the mantra of Jabez:
She looked directly at me and said, “Be human! You’re too ethereal and ghostly. You’re fingers aren’t even touching your briefcase, for Pete’s sake,’ she said. “Grow up. Doesn’t the Incarnation mean anything? Life is more than passing out Christian sentences. Pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. Show me how to see the glory of God in the ordinary things of life, show me how to be faithful and find meaning in the quotidan; show me how to ‘eat my bread with joy and drink my wine with a merry heart’ like Solomon says. Show me how to raise children so that, from them, generations will rise up and count me blessed. Show me how to live life artfully. Show me….”
She kept shouting after me as I wandered off. There was no helping her. She just didn’t get it. Not only did those things require time and maturity and a future (and wine!), but they didn’t involve real ministry. They would require seeing the world and life poetically, as if the heavens declared the glory of God or “day unto day uttered speech.” But God isn’t concerned with little things: “He that is faithful in the big things of ministerial work, he shall be blessed” (Luke 16:10).
Housewives and office workers and engineers and children can’t really live the Christina life. They are too encumbered by earthly things. They actually touch stuff with their fingers. An exciting life means that you will find exhilaration in big, daily miracles. If we spent our time seeing the miraculous in ordinary things–in labor and cleaning and raising children and creating, then God would have by no means by which to get out His sentences. If ordinary Christians were truly able to delight in the divine poetry of housework, flowers, clothes, oceans, car repair, and plumbing, if they were able to see the utter glory of god in every mundane thing, then who would buy this booklet? Who would think that ministry only equals evangelisitic sesrvice? No one would want my bungee mantra.
(The Mantra of Jabeez, Jones, p.48-49)
This sarcastic narrative is a true but sad commentary on much of Christianity today. The lead character exhibits a problem with the way many Christians view their life, and the woman who challenges him brings up a lot of good points. We need to be more human. Less ethereal and ghostly. Less shallow. And take more delight in good things that God has given us and the good callings we are called to, even if they don’t seem very “spiritual” to others. And as this book sacrastically illustrates us, we need to stop thinking mantras, catchy cod words, and thoughtless platitudes are what pleases God.