Chapter Seven--The Shrink Dynamic
Chapter Seven
The Shrink Dynamic
dy·nam·ic: an interactive system or process, characterized by action or forcefulness
The bottom line: sin causes all of us to shrink the size of our lives to the size of our lives.
Unless you’re an alien from another planet, you’ve probably been frustrated by it. It was created by the French scientist Henri DePoix to preserve meat for soldiers during the World War I. It is simply plastic that has had its molecules stretched under high temperatures and then cooled. The soldiers’ meat was preserved, so we’ve been finding uses for it ever since. It makes it nearly impossible for you to open your child’s new toy, or that CD you can’t wait to listen to, or the pocket knife you just bought at the hardware store. We use it to protect antique books and the ski boat between seasons. You know it well, because you’ve encountered it many times. It’s called “shrink wrap.”
The amazing thing about shrink wrap is that it does it every time without fail. It is one of the most successful and predictable products ever invented. It will always shrink to the exact size of whatever it has been wrapped around. Whether it’s a piece of beef jerky or dad’s prize fishing boat, it always shrinks to the contour of the thing inside of it, and it’s always difficult to take it off. Henri DePoix had no idea how his commission to keep soldiers from food poisoning would change the life of every modern consumer.
The effect of sin is very similar to DePoix’s invention, but its influence is much more comprehensive. Sin causes fundamental changes in the “molecules” of my heart. No longer is my heart driven by a deep-seated love for God. No longer is my heart motivated by a genuine care for others. No longer do I carry around a sense of responsibility for the surrounding created world. No longer is every decision I make shaped by a clear sense of what is morally right and morally wrong. No longer is everything I do shaped by joyful and thankful worship. The DNA of sin is selfishness, and it shrinks the size of my universe to the size of one. Sin creates the ultimate shrink dynamic. It causes all of us in some way to shrink the size of our lives to the size of our lives. Sin shrinks my motivation, zeal, desire, care, and concern to the contours of my life. In the shrunken kingdom of self, there is no functional room for God or others. It is humbling, but spiritually essential, to admit that sin has shrink-wrapped us all.
You see it in a wordless infant who in the crib stiffens his body in anger, because his mother has had the audacity to leave the room. You see it in the endless fights of young children over who had the toy first or who hit whom first. You see it in the endless repetition of a teenager’s self-centered complaints. You see it in the hardships of the first few years of marriage, when the newlyweds are shocked by what it takes to live in a loving relationship with another human being. You see it in how difficult it is for the people of a church to be unified. You see it in drivers racing for a parking spot. You see it in a million moments of human covetousness and envy. You see it in broken families and crime-ridden cities. You see it in the bitter complaints of the old man as his life ebbs away. Sin atrophies our care and shrinks our concern. No matter how you dress it up, the news isn’t really that good: sin leaves us caring about little more than ourselves. It is a condition in which we were simply not made to live.
Since the Bible records the damage of sin and the need for redemption, this shrink dynamic is illustrated throughout biblical history. Think about it. Adam and Eve shrunk the size of their lives to the size of their desire to be like God. Cain shrunk the size of his life to the size of his desire to have what Abel had. Jacob shrunk the size of his life to the size of his quest for Esau’s inheritance. The children of Israel in the wilderness shrunk the size of their lives to the size of their desire for better food (than manna). Achan shrunk the size of his life to the size of his lust for Palestinian plunder. King Saul shrunk the size of his life to the size of his craving for the spoils of the Amalekite defeat. Jonah shrunk the size of his life to the size of his own definition of justice. The Pharisees shrunk the size of their lives to the size of their own righteousness. Peter shrunk the size of his life to the size of his fear of others. Judas shrunk the size of his life to the size of thirty pieces of silver. These are but a few of the biblical stories that chronicle how sin shrinks our hearts to care for little more than ourselves.
Broken Models, Selfish Desires
It was one of my worst childhood moments. My brother Tedd had quite the prestigious model car collection, carefully displayed on shelves in his bedroom. He had assembled and painted them all himself and was quite proud of his handiwork. For some reason that I don’t now remember, Tedd had angered me. He made the mistake of breaking my law, so in a fit of anger, I hit him where I knew it would hurt. I ran into his room, took off my shoe, and smashed his collection. I knew what I was doing, and it felt good. Well, it felt good until my mom discovered what I had done.
This sad moment in the life of one child is a picture of every sinner. We all want to be accepted, served, and validated by the people and circumstances around us. When this doesn’t happen, our reactions range from mild irritation to violent anger. Married couples criticize one another, not because their spouse has broken God’s law, but their own law. Parents get angry with their children, not because they are sinners, but because in their sin they mess up what their parents crave. Neighbors break relationship with each other because they don’t like the way they have been treated or the way the neighbor keeps his yard. Businessmen work too hard and too long because they are never able to be satisfied and content. People move in and out of local churches as if they were malls because they didn’t feel like they were getting what they needed. Siblings fight over the final bowl of cereal, who gets to hold the remote control, where people are going to sit in the car, and who gets to take his shower first. People at parties jockey to be the center of attention. A man will throw a good marriage away for a few moments of erotic pleasure, and a teenager will sell his soul for the acceptance of his peers.
People live with a debt load they are unable to bear because they have convinced themselves that they need more than they really need. We think our houses aren’t big enough, that there aren’t enough clothes in our closet, and that we haven’t got enough money in our pockets. We eat much more than we need and talk about being hungry when we seldom actually experience what the word means. We constantly think “me and mine,” “bigger and better,” and “now not later.” We hate it when someone is in the bathroom we want to use, when we’re asked to do something we hadn’t planned on, or when we are asked to go without. We think getting is a greater blessing than giving. We love it when we are able to prove ourselves right and another wrong. We dream of what our lives would be like if we were in control. We are often blind to opportunities to love, while we are all too skilled at remembering an offense against us.
Everywhere you look you see it. The implications are impossible to escape. It makes it hard for us to live with one another and nearly impossible to be content within ourselves. The fundamental core of sin is selfishness. It is a solitary universe turned in on itself. Sin really is the ultimate shrink wrap. It shrinks the size of your care and concern to the contours of your life. From the little boy in anger smashing his brother’s model cars to the wife who is bitter because she never got the marriage of her dreams, sin does something tragic. It turns us in on ourselves. Stop, look, and listen, and you will see the tendency in you and around you.
The Huge Contours of God
What’s so heinous about all of this is that when I am content to live in my little kingdom of one, it is God who gets squeezed out. He will not shrink himself to the size of my solitary kingdom. He cannot abandon his only glory or deny his sovereign plan. He will be God, and he will not be anything else. The kingdom that is to capture and motivate us was meant to be no smaller than the size of his grandeur. I was never meant to shrink the size of my life to a size smaller than the contours of his glory. I was never created to establish my own kingdom, but to give myself in wholehearted, sacrificial devotion to his.
The psalmist in Psalm 145 captures the expansiveness of this kind of living with a picturesque phrase. He says that the greatness of God no one can fathom. A fathom is a measurement of water depth. When something is fathomless, it means it is so great that it cannot be measured. It has no bottom to it. The psalmist is basically saying that if you lined up every human being who has ever lived, and if they each dug down into God’s greatness, one after another, they would still not come to the bottom of it! His glory is just that deep. The size of my living was meant to be connected to the depth of his greatness. The fathomless greatness of God is the more that I was designed to live for.
When I expand my living inside the huge tent of his glory, immediately there is room for other people in my life as well. Community with him results in meaningful community with others. Think about it. Sin is functionally atheistic and antisocial. Because it reduces my focus to me, it blinds me both to God and to others. And as a sinner, I may participate in formal religion and conduct relationships with others, but only to the degree that they fit with the purposes of my solitary kingdom. When I do this, there is no real room for worship of God and love for others in my functional life plan. Worship and love, wherever they exist in my life, get shrunk to the size of what I think I need and what I have determined I want. Whatever religion or community exists in my life, what I am really worshipping is me. So I will sing praise to God’s faithfulness on Sunday, yet question his goodness on Tuesday when he doesn’t deliver what I think I need. I will say I love you one day, yet lash out at you in anger on another because somehow you have gotten in the way of my plan. What looks like God-contoured living is often, upon closer inspection, a shrink-wrapped existence.
Yet, it was never supposed to be this way. From the first moment of the creation of Adam and Eve, people were designed to live within the huge contours of the glory of God. We were not designed to settle for personal survival, temporal happiness, or individual success. We were created to find our meaning, identity, and purpose in the existence, character, and plan of God. Our identity was meant to be rooted in his love. Our hope was designed to be tied to his grace. Our potential was meant to be connected to his power. Our purpose was meant to be structured by his will. Our joy was meant to be wed to his glory. In every way, our vision of what is necessary, true, worthy, and meaningful was meant to be rooted in a functional worship of him. We were created for the dignity of living large and meaningful lives—lives that literally are connected to things before the creation of the world and extending far into eternity.
This results in an expansive existence, a kind of living that spans far beyond the normal things that would grip, engage, entertain, and fulfill the average human being. This kind of big-God, big-picture living means that we care about many things that do not actually touch or immediately involve us. And why do we care about these things? Because God, who is the source and center of our lives, does. God-contoured living means that God’s purposes become our functional life goals, that things God says are valuable become the real-life treasures we seek, and that God’s will provides the fences within which we live. The “more” we live for is his plan for us and for all things. We begin to get excited because we see how grace has connected our story to his sweeping story. We start to understand that grace cuts a hole in sin’s shrink wrap. Grace reaches in, pulls us out, and locates us in a place that is more exciting and meaningful than anything we could have ever conceived of ourselves. This place is oxygenated by his love, invigorated by his power, and decorated with his glory. This huge and wonderful place, where we were meant to live and find our identity and purpose, is the kingdom of God.
The Contours of the Shrunken Kingdom
But, sadly, we all tend to get excited about another kingdom. Sin kidnaps our concern and atrophies our care. Sin blinds us to God’s glory and leaves us deaf to his call. Tragically, sin leaves us all too willing to be satisfied with expending our gifts and energies on ourselves. Sin shrinks each of us to a mini-king, ruling our mini-kingdoms of one. It reduces the human community to a society of kings colliding with each other’s solitary kingdoms. No wonder we live with such conflict in our individual lives and so much war in the global community! It is an act of God’s grace that we can live with each other at all.
Maybe you’re thinking at this point, “Okay, Paul, I get it. I understand the shrink dynamic, but I’m not sure I get what it looks like in the context of everyday living.” So let’s examine the narrow contours of the kingdom of self.
Here and now. The shrink-wrapped kingdom of self tends to have its eyes firmly focused on the present. It is about what I see, hear, think, and feel in the here and now. This kingdom isn’t a kingdom of delayed gratification or persevering patience. It is an impatient kingdom that wants what it wants and wants it now.
But since we have immortal souls, we are designed to live with eternity always in view. This moment is but an introduction to, and a preparation for, what is to come. The entire length of our lives on earth is but an infinitesimal blip in time when compared with the expansiveness of the eternity that lies ahead of us. The culture of the big kingdom is shaped by eyes that are on eternity. The culture of the big kingdom sees now as an investment in then. The culture of the big kingdom finds value and joy in eternal investments, rather than in the endless catalog of temporary investments in the material joys of the here and now.
No, it is not evil to invest in a good car, to buy a good house, to enjoy a relaxing vacation, or to relish the pleasures of a succulent steak. Each of these things points, in some way, to the creative glory of God. The issue here is what drives the system. It is all about what you are living for, what gives you meaning and purpose, what gets you up in the morning, what gives you identity, where you seek to find joy, what you seek to satisfy your heart, and where you are looking to find life.
The kingdom of self tends to have its focus on the joys, pleasure, and pursuits of the here and now. No one critiques this way of living better than C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.
If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither. 5
Me and mine. The shrunken kingdom is also nearsighted. It doesn’t see well at a distance. Its vision of what is needful, important, valuable, vital, urgent, worthwhile, and necessary tends to travel no further than the cares and concerns of self. Of course, I am supposed to be a good steward of the gifts the Lord has given me, and I should care for my immediate friends and family. It is not wrong to do so. What is wrong is to spend so much time caring for me that there is no time or energy left to expend on the cares and concerns of the vast universe that exist outside the borders of my life.
Perhaps something that happened to me in seminary would help illustrate this idea. I attended a seminary in Philadelphia that was located in an urban community scarred with all of the physical, personal, and socioeconomic blight that has inflicted many communities in America’s greatest cities. Each day I would carpool to the seminary with three or four future pastors to study the rich theology of God’s Word for the purpose of preparing ourselves to minister to sinners dealing with the difficulties of life in a broken world. We would have the most amazing and exciting conversations as we rode back and forth together. I loved those trips as much as I enjoyed the classes.
One morning the car was quiet, and I looked out the window beyond myself and my posse of future theologians. For the first time I really saw broken houses, cars, and people. There was crying need everywhere I looked. I sat in the back seat of that seminary-bound car and began to weep, not just at the obvious destructiveness of sin on that community, but at my own blindness. I had been in that community day after day, but I had been utterly blind to anything beyond me and mine. I was preparing for the ministry, but I had a shockingly uncaring heart.
Wants and needs. We all live with a sense of personal need and desire. It would be an act of irrationality to act as if you needed nothing. It is not wrong to desire certain things. Once more, the issue is what dominates your heart and sets the agenda for your life. Is so much of your time expended on caring for your own needs and satisfying your personal desires that you have little or no time left for the larger concerns of the kingdom of God?
The kingdom of self is fundamentally driven by a personal commitment to make sure I get everything I think I need and to do all I can to satisfy my every desire. It is not a kingdom that is shaped by what God wants and by what others need. My needs occupy so much space that it is hard for anything else to compete for my attention, energy, and interest.
Physical and material. The shrink-wrapped kingdom tends to be about what can be seen, heard, felt, touched, tasted, or in some way physically experienced. It is a lifestyle that is dominated by the physical experiences and pleasures of the physical creation. It is dominated by physical appearance and sensory pleasures.
Now, balance is needed here once again. We are physical people, and we do live in a beautifully created physical world. God has given us much to please our eyes and fill our stomachs. There are amazing pleasures to be enjoyed in the physical world, and it can be an act of worship to do so, but the danger is that life would be defined by things seen rather than things unseen. The kingdom of self tends to be more focused on what the hands can touch than what the heart should embrace.
Entitlements and rights. The kingdom of self tends to be a “this is what I deserve,” “this is my position,” “this is what belongs to me,” and “this is how you should treat me” kingdom. It is a kingdom that finds greater delight in being served than in serving. Here you tend to be most grieved by offenses against yourself. Here you have a vigilant eye to how others are treating you. Here your relationships are shaped by your expectations for how the people around you should relate to you. Here you are very clear about your property, your position, and your rights.
Now, this does not mean it is godly to be a doormat or to willingly open yourself up for mistreatment or abuse. The issue again is what is driving the system. Is my life expended by a protection of personal boundaries, personal property, and personal entitlements; or am I willing to lay down my rights, to sacrifice my comfort, and even expose myself to mistreatment for the sake of the work of God’s kingdom?
Sin holds the physical glories of the here-and-now world in front of you and tells you that they are the only glories worth living for. Sin shrinks your zeal and narrows your vision. Sin makes it hard to see beyond the borders of your own life. Grace enables you to tear down fences of self-focus, self-defensiveness, and self-protection so you can reach out to God and others. In so doing you will not only experience true glory, but you will recapture your true humanity.
The final question: has the energy of your life been expended in the narrow world of personal wants, needs, and concerns?