At the beginning of Lent, I gave a fellow seminarian some advice.  Now, that advice is kicking my butt.

The advice was simple – to survive seminary, as a time of formation, you had to allow yourself to be assimilated, and not try to understand so much.  Sure, you had to think about things, but the more important aspect was not to anticipate, and not to try to understand everything.  To be patient, and simply experience everything in the moment, reflecting on it later.  Seminary is experiential and formational more than academic.

Of course, the evil one immediately heard that and began to attack.

Perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration, but I certainly felt like that was the case.  I immediately encountered several very personally important things in my life that were now being delayed, some indefinitely.

Taking my own “medicine” in this regard was (and still is) challenging.

It did force me to consider a couple of things, though.

First, I think it is common to all religious belief, and to an extent non-religious beliefs, that the central issue we all struggle with is lack of control.  We spend enormous quantities of time either processing and re-processing the past or imagining and re-imagining the future.  Yet, in the final analysis, we can change neither.

Control seems to be the issue in every conflict, whether over land, or rights, or property.  Wars, political discourse, parent/teen struggles, religious beliefs – all of them boil down to control, and our desire for it.

In the Genesis account of the beginning of the creation, humanity’s desire to control was manifest in attempting to obtain for themselves what was prohibited them by the One in control.  Very early on, this need for control, and our lack of it, was identified as the central issue of humanity’s reconciliation to creation, and Creator.

Religious practices and beliefs seem (to me at least) to focus around helping us accept that we are not in control of anything.  In some respects, our ancient ancestors probably had a more realistic view of life than we do as more “rational” beings.  They seem to have recognize that they were not in control, and they made offerings to the being they thought was in control.  The mythologies developed differently, but they all had a theme.  One being in charge of an aspect of living.

And, seemingly, once the sacrifice was made, there was nothing to plan, nothing to analyze.  Simply put, you waited.  That waiting occurred in the moment, and in the moment, humanity found life.

I haven’t studied this theory, but it seems like there is some validity to it.  Ancient man got up, and if the sun/moon/stars were in a certain position, then something happened.  Planting, harvesting, sacrificing – all part of a rhythm of life, a cyclical way of living, that allowed humanity to stay in the present.

This is perhaps why the ability to foretell the future was such a valued commodity.  The Christian and Jewish scriptures are replete with stories of kings and leaders consulting prophets and others who could discern the future outcome.  Eventually those people became gods of themselves, because they could not only foretell the future, but could likely advise the leadership on how to avoid a disastrous outcome.

Coming to today, we see that futurists and scientists become our “gods,” as they have the ability to see cause and effect.  The knowledge is not yet perfected – far from it – but they tend to know more than the “average Joe” and are admired.

Most religious systems, however, take a drastically different approach.  The Orthodox Christian tradition focuses our attention on the Creator by ensuring we are attentive to the now.  We find God, and encounter Him, we are told, through being, in the stillness and quiet of simple existence.

But, as futurists and management gurus one after another have testified – paradigm shifts are painful.  This one, of my own design and offering, is really kicking my butt.  And I really, really dislike kicking myself.

What about you?  Do you agree that control is the (or “a”) central issue to be dealt with?  How does your tradition deal, or not deal, with the idea of control?