1. Hurry

(soft music) - Hey everybody, welcome to the Fight Hustle and Hurry podcast. Here we talk about the cultural pervasiveness and problem of hustle and hurry and how as followers of Jesus, we can resist them in our daily lives. My name is Jeff Bethke and author living in Maui, Hawaii and I'm joined by John Mark Comer, a pastor and teacher at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to season one. (soft music) What's up guys, Jeff Bethke here. This is a special treat for me because this is a project I've been wanting to do for a while and I'm excited for how it came about. We have John Mark Comer on the other side coming in from Portland, Oregon. I'm over in Maui, Hawaii and we are so excited. If you're tuning in, this is the Fight Hustle and Hurry podcast where we wanna do exactly that. We titled it that because we wanna equip it and encourage you to do that exact thing. We think hustle and hurry are one of the two, are two of the most detrimental things to our spiritual walk following Jesus in the West in the 21st century today. So me and John Mark said, hey, we've written books on this, we're putting books out on this, but what would it look like to have a conversation over 11 weeks, 12 weeks over the entire fall of 2019? Where we dig a little deeper, where we talk about some different things, and I know for me I'm excited 'cause I'm gonna talk about all the stuff that got cut from my book because as you know, two of their stuff that gets in there that the publisher says, "Ah, now we say, hey, I wanna talk about it, so we'll put it in the podcast." But I'm so, so, so excited. And I'm gonna ask John Mark a question here in a second, just 'cause we wanna get going. We don't want these to be laborious or long by any means. We want them to be focused and centered. But just to tell a quick anecdote, and I've talked to John Mark about this before and I put it in the book. It's this famous little story, a manic joke from David Foster Wallace, where he basically tells this story at a commencement speech he gave. I think I'm like 2004, 2005, and I don't even think it was from him at some level. It's probably an unoriginal idea. One of those, probably almost at some level. And what he does, he talks about these two fish, three fish actually. There's these two young fish. They're swimming along, right? And then they come across this old fish. And this old fish says, "Hey, how's the water today, guys?" And then the two kids, the two young fish say, "What the hell is water?" When they leave the old man, 'cause I'm like, "I don't know what he was talking about." And it's a joke, right? And we like to say, it should be what the heck is water, if you're a good Christian, but it's a quote, so we can get away with it. And I think why I love that little anecdote is and why I wanna start there, is because hustle and hurry are that water. Hustle and hurry are that water. And I think a lot of us are more the young fish, completely oblivious and unaware to the water we're swimming in and how that's actually affecting us. And so that's gonna be episode one today is hurry. The first one, the problem, the symptoms, what is it, what's going on? And this podcast is coming out of effect that me and John Mark both texted each other, probably summer of 2019 and said, "Hey, I got a book coming out, he said, "Hey, I have a book coming out, "Hey, do you wanna read it? "Can you endorse it?" We both asked each other the same questions. And then we sent each other the titles, and mine was to hell with the hustle. And his was the ruthless elimination of hurry. And what was funny is we just kinda looked at each other and laughed, and we both also picked red book covers. So they're almost like twin books at some level. And we realized like, oh man, there's some synergy here, there's some like mindedness here. We both are feeling the same pull, the same call, the same problem, and we wanna talk about it. And so then we said, oh, a podcast would be perfect to continue this conversation as we talk about this. So John Mark, you go ahead and I wanna hear you start, because I think that's the best place to start is the ruthless elimination of hurry. Beautiful title, beautiful way of life that I think we need to chase after, but where'd that quote come from? And maybe give a little background too on your story with hurry and why that's so important and where that kinda got us to this moment. - Yeah, that quote is not original to me. There's a backstory to it. So it's always tricky to nail down the exact fork and the row moment that marked the beginning of a tectonic shift in your life or major change. I think for me, if I had to name it a few years ago, I was eating lunch with John Ortberg, who's a hero of mine. If you don't know Ortberg, he's a pastor, teacher, writer of the way of Jesus at a church in the Bay Area. And I would not call him a mentor. He is out of my league for that and would likely shy away from that moniker. But whenever I'm in the Bay Area, once or twice a year, we sit down for lunch and he, most of the time, is gracious enough to sit down with me and I come with a list of questions and he is like the guru, say, "Jioda of the kingdom of God in my mind." And the first time we sat down for lunch, I was aware that John was mentored himself for like, I think, 20 plus years by the philosopher Dallas Willard. And if you're not familiar with Dallas Willard, first off, you're welcome. If nothing else, that's worth a podcast. Secondly, I think for me not to overestimate but Willard after the writers and the New Testament and of course Jesus himself is really the main influence on my, my, my vision of reality and really what it means to follow as he would say, apprentice under Jesus of Nazareth. And so Willard just brilliant thinker, he's dead now, died a few years ago, but Orpah told me the story about, I think it was the late 90s and John at the time was on staff at a well-known, international, you know, well-known, mega church, he was the teaching pastor, he was already a best-selling author at that point. I think he was around my age, but and I don't remember his exact language but said something to the effect of, "Man, I'm just getting sucked into the busyness "and speed and unhealth and the grind "or whatever he would have called it "of mega church life and middle age and American life "and I feel stuck in my growth to Christlike maturity." And basically asked Willard who's out in California at the time, like what do I need to do to fix the problem? And he said that with Willard, he said there was a long silence on the other end of the line because I think he said, quote, "With Willard there's always a long silence." He's just notorious for like really slow and in the moment. And then Willard just said two sentences, both iconic. First he said, "Hurry is the great enemy "of spiritual life in our day." And then he said, "You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry "from your life." And that's where that title of my book comes from. And John said, as you would imagine, that's amazing, wow, never thought about it that way or whatever he said, wrote it down. And then he said, "Okay, what else is there?" And he said there was another long silence on the other end of the line. And then Willard said, "There is nothing else. "You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." And when I first was told that story, and I think John's written it down in a book or two now, it really hit a deep place of resonance in my heart. Like I literally could not get out of that out of my mind for days and days and days. And I began to realize, and this was not even on my radar before that, you know, was not, and I'm quasi-perceptive, but it was not on my radar. Begin to realize that hurry is kind of the issue under all of the issues in my heart. And this kind of low grade anxiety I was living with, the kind of anger that would leak out, the lack of life, the lack of presence to God, to other people, the breakdown in my own growth and maturity toward love. Hurry was kind of the issue before all of those other issues. You know, five years ago, when this was a kind of a new idea to me, at the time, first off, I'm living in Portland, Oregon, which is one of the most secular post-Christian cities in America, if not in the world. And if you had asked me, like, what's the, you know, the great enemy of spiritual life, or put another way, what's the greatest challenge you face following Jesus and kind of as a pastor and you are attempt to help other people follow Jesus in your city? I don't know what I would have said, you know, politics or partisan this or technology or, you know, the redefinition of sexuality marriage or the breakdown of divorce or attachment theory. I don't even know what I would have said. Yeah. But my guess is hurry would not have even made the top 10. But the more I think about it, the more I realize what the heck, that's right up there at the top. You know, five years ago, I was leading a mega church at the time in a city. I have three kids, family live. On my phone, I was addicted to my phone. I was addicted to social media, addicted to the internet. And I used that word, I think, in the clinical sense. And I just had stalled out in my growth and maturity toward Christ's likeness or if you want to put another way toward love. I just, I remember like in high school and college in my early 20s, I felt like I was on this quasi linear kind of upward trajectory toward maturity. Then I just stalled out right around 25 or something. As I began to kind of enter, you know, real life is not the right way to put it, but just kind of adulthood and to adult as the verb acid. Now it is for my nails. I just felt like I stalled out. And year over year, I felt like I was becoming more anxious and exhausted and on edge and not present to my body or the moment and not more and more loving and joyful and peaceful. And so when this kind of first hit me, honestly, there was like, aha moment's a cheesy way. It was like this watershed moment. Like I would literally describe it as a fork in the road. And I could see one trajectory where I just move forward on the kind of Western American hustle, hurry, culture, mega church culture go for it. And then another road that to me was kind of a one-track trail up into the wilderness. I don't even know where exactly it goes, but with a very different metric of success and a very different way of life. And so five years ago, I basically stepped down from leading this mega church. I did not quit the church. We had a location that was in the city and I basically said, hey, would it be cool if I just were to teach that and pastor this one church that was much smaller. We moved within walking distance. tonight. Basically, when unsubatical and came back to a whole new way of life, some Sabbath, spiritual disciplines, therapy, emotional health, way less work hours, digital minimalism, silence and solitude, life in community, presence to the moment, like all of this stuff. But over the last five years, and it's just been life-changing. I feel not like I have it all together at all, but now I feel like I'm back on the way, back on the journey toward healing and freedom and toward love. But man, that hands down the greatest challenge for the whole thing has been to slow down. Man alive, and with a phone in a city with kids in this cultural, in the, not the air that we breathe, in the fish analogy, the water that we breathe to breathe. The water we swim in, there we go. Man, it's been a thing. So that's a little bit of my journey. And for me, I just, I really don't think that you can tweak your life a little bit to slow down. I think you actually have to, at some level, ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life if you want to become a person of love. I love that. And I was even thinking about both of our book titles. How they both have a pretty strong edge, right? The ruthless elimination of hurry and then to hell with the hustle. And you got to, you got to be the hustler to be in to a Christian book. You got to cussword into a Christian book, man. I know. Well, the argument is, and we'll get to this in the season. The argument I made is that that is actually, I'm just, I'm saying that literal, like I'm saying that like if it's not from the spirit of Jesus, I know I'm with you, man. I'm with you. It's only for one other place. But I have no double. I'm talking about what's a little nice. I know guilt over your sin. It's all good. I just, I'm, that's right. I'm just saying it. Yes, I, I almost made a parody version called to heck with the hustle so that some of the Christian distributors, you know, would be fine selling it. That's a whole other conversation. But what, but, but what I think is interesting about those titles is those are not us just trying to be provocative. I think what we're trying to actually say is this topic necessitates that strong of language because you have to be actively, the, the problem is so subversively invisible. Yes. You have to so strongly be resisting it. And so that's what I want this whole season that we do to be about that when people are listening, wherever you're listening from, whatever state or country you're listening in on that this first episode on hurry. First of all, take a look and pause and reflect on man like, can you chase this one all the way down to the center of your soul to the under the soil problem that's actually causing a myriad of symptoms? Probably, right? Because again, this is the water we swim in. And so reflect on that for a second. But then too, like you said, we can't tweak our way into holiness. I think at some level because the pressures are so onslaughting us, you have to have that same spirit of resistance back towards it, right? And I think that's true with all the battle language and scripture, with all the armor language and scripture. And I think some people obviously take some of that stuff overboard, but it's resisting in love, right? So it's being militant, but in love. And so there's an interesting way about Jesus that we have to be ruthlessly doing these things in love for our own life, for our marriages, if we're married, in our dorm rooms, in our jobs, et cetera, so that then we can actually be accurate representations of the kingdom of God as we become more and more like Jesus every single day, right? And one thing that you said, I want to talk about for a second, use the word addictive. And I thought that was really interesting because I think I agree that it's this style or the speed of walking to a lot of us is addictive. And I even had a quote that I was reading the other day from Jeff Bezos' shareholder's letter, which I thought was really interesting, where he was celebrating kind of the speed or this hurry. And he said, in his letter, he said, "Speed matters in business pretty much absolutely." And then he says, "Plus, a high velocity decision-making environment is more fun too." And I just thought, what a phrase, man, high velocity decision-making environment and how speed is basically what he's saying is speed and high velocity is paramount to him and to a lot of businesses and to a lot of cultures. I don't think it's paramount to the way of Jesus. And so we have to understand that we are different people with a different ethic, but you use the word addictive. And I think that's what would you say to this question? I think hurry is actually problematic to our lives, but it's also addictive, meaning like we like it. We like it. Like he just said, it's more fun too, right? So how do we wrestle with that? How do we wrestle with the fact that it's actually hurting us, but part of us really likes it? Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not a psychologist, so my grasp of addiction is cursory, but from what I understand about addiction, you know, there's the just basic neurobiological dopamine thing. Like you do this thing, whether it's take drugs or drink too much or have sex or check your phone or post to Instagram or hurry, and there's a dopamine release in your body that has this instant kind of feel good hit. But most experts that I've ever read on the subject say that addiction is way deeper than just some neurobiological like draw toward a substance or habit or activity or relationship that it's normally some form of like an emotional narcotic, so to speak, even if it's not a drug. It's some attempt in just layman's language. It's an attempt to run from the pain of life. So most people who have a sex addiction or a substance abuse or drug or alcohol addiction or social media addiction or work addiction or what are money addiction or shopping addiction or whatever it is, most of the time it's an attempt to just like self-medicate some kind of a deeper pain. You know, Orporic has this great line, "Hurry's not just a sign of a disordered schedule, it's a sign of a disordered heart." Yeah. And I think that for us to think about, okay, where is this hurry coming from? And at a surface level it might just feel like, "Oh, I want to experience more of the world or watch more TV or do more things or run more errands or whatever." But it's likely like a much deeper issue that could be any number of things where we're running from a kind of pain and we're scared to slow down to live life as it actually is with all of its deep goodness and beauty and all of its pain, you know. But I think what you're saying is right, the reason it's so tricky is because not only are you, you know, back to the fish analogy, you have to swim upstream. You literally have to 180 degree your value for what life is all about, what the good life is, what your metrics of success are. You literally begin calling what most people call a virtue of ice. So we'll talk about hustle in the next episode. But I love that with hustle. Most people use that in a positive light and for you it's a pejorative. It's a negative word. So you literally have to like 180. And that absolute, I used to brag about how many hours I work, how many days off, you know, how many days off. Five missed or whatever, how much I did that week or whatever. And I began to realize, oh my gosh, like my value system is so off kilter and there's something like, like not right at a deep level in my heart. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I think one thing we've talked about before too is one of the, I think why the reasons this is actually hurt because I've heard you say before too, this isn't just effect culture, this effects followers of Jesus. And that's why I think it's so detrimental because it's kind of one of those things that's snuck in the back door and it's affecting all of us, which then is affecting how we live as followers of Jesus in the kingdom of God. And like me and you have talked about before, I think, you know, it comes down to, you have to have a robust view of the kingdom. And what the kingdom, the kingdom has a king, the kingdom has a charter, the kingdom has laws. This is true of any kingdom, any country, any kind of overarching body of governance. But what's really true also about kingdoms is they have cultures, they have DNA, they have things that kind of tip their hats towards what they're like. And you can kind of kind of judge them in a flash per se, right? Like if someone talks with an Australian accent, you know that they're Australian within three seconds, right? Yes. Not based on what they believe, but just based on what the hat that's been tipped because of their accent or their culture and stuff of that nature. And there is things about us as followers of Jesus that that's also true. And I think a lot of times we spend too much time, not too much time. I think a lot of times we only focus on the words of Jesus, but we don't ever actually talk about the pace of Jesus or the culture of Jesus or the way of Jesus. And those things go hand in hand. Like I don't think Jesus even says the words he says without the pace he lives, in my opinion, because he's usually teaching out of his pace, by the way. He's usually going at a speed, going about his life, and then things are happening in front of him that then he teaches out of. He's very responsive in his teaching based on what's happening in front of him because of his pace. And so I'd love to hear you talk about that of like, what would it look like for us as followers of Jesus to actually understand that one of the things that can make us stand out is actually the cadence we walk out with Jesus. Yeah, 100%. I mean, and for me, that's how I come to this. I think emotional health is one half of this conversation, like the fact that we're living with low grade anxiety and depression and we're tired all the time and there's that. But then there's the whole spiritual life side of the equation. Like we're literally, you know, CS Lewis spiritual director once said that, "Hurry is the death of prayer." You know, because when we're in a rush and we're always on the go, like we cut our mind, like hurry has the same effect upon our prayer life or if you prefer, our relationship to the spirit of God as sin does. It cuts off our mind and body from a living connection to an awareness of the spirit of God, exact same effect, right? So I guess I get to it for a few things, two or three things. I start with the premise that Jesus was not in a hurry. The Jesus that I read about in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John on the New Testament was a Jesus whose life was full. but not over full, meaning he had a lot to do, but not too much to do. And that's where we tip over from a healthy kind of busyness to a toxic kind of hurry. You know, hurry is when, not when you have a lot to do, it's when you have too much to do and too little time. So you have to speed up your mind and your body and as a result, your relationships and cut out the moment the people in front of you to get it all in, right? So when I read the stories of Jesus, I just see a Jewish rabbi who is far more than just a Jewish rabbi who was not in a hurry. Half of the best stories in the gospel are interruptions and Jesus just strikes me as so present to the moment, present to the God the Father that is all around him, heaven and earth overlap in his mind and body, present to the people around him, friend and enemy, present just to like look at the birds of the air. I mean, literally right in the middle, discern in the mountain, he's like, look at the birds. Like look around you, you know, so present to the moment. And then my second kind of like logical step for me is all right, I think that a key aspect of Jesus' teaching was this idea of an easy yoke or other language used by Jesus is life and life to the full or other language is like restfulness or abiding. And I just think that, you know, if we want to glorify Jesus in Christian language, that happens when we are well-rested, happy at peace people and not when we're exhausted and tired. That's when like we're at our worst, whether it's with temptation or people or wisdom, we're all at our worst when we're overtired. And hurry is fine for a little while and then like the byproduct of that is exhaustion. And then I get the third piece where that takes me to is when I read the teachings of Jesus, I see at the center of his vision of the kingdom of God and I would see this particular in the gospel of John and then especially in Paul's writings as well, this triumvirate of love, joy and peace. And these are not just emotions in Jesus' paradigm, they are like the inner disposition, they are the kind of people that we become through our apprenticeship to him. We become people who are by nature loving, who are full of joy and who are just calm. And in the moment and at peace and you know what Friedman called a non-anxious presence, like man does the world need more of that. And if you think about it, all three of those are incompatible with the life of hurry. Love, all of my worst moments, my most unloving moments as a husband, father, pastor, friend, our neighbor are all when I'm in a hurry. Every single one, we relate for the door. Kids, get down here right now. How many times have you told him? Finish the kitchen right now, like whatever it is. Like all my worst moments are when I'm in a rush, joy, like all of the experts on happiness from inside and outside the Jesus tradition agree if there's a secret to like the happy life, it's just present to the moment. Even if the moment's not a great moment, just how much can I be in my body in this moment right now. And peace, like none of us need a lecture on that. Like when it's the last time we were late for a flight and just felt the deep shalom of God in our body, you know? And so I just think that following Jesus into the kingdom is incompatible with hurry. I mean another orbric lying as long as we're just channeling an orbric and I feel like he should get royalties off of this except there's no money to be made here. But if there was, but he has this great line, I cannot live in the kingdom of God with a hurried soul. Not I should not, not I really feel bad about it. I cannot. And I just think that's so true. I can't live at the pace of America or whatever, you know, the Western, or just the 21st century of world and live under the rule of love and joy and peace. - Amen, amen. I think guys, and one thought I had while you're talking and we can end with this as we go into this whole season, which I'm so excited about for you guys to listen to "Weak by Week," but starting here, you have to start with the problem, right? And so we don't want it to feel heavy, but we want it to actually feel specific and focused that you have to, we want to spend the first couple weeks looking at the problem, right? Hurry and hustle and what is actually God call of us. And then we can look at "Weak by Week," what are some really beautiful ways we can resist that is in the way of Jesus. But ending with this thought, I was thinking as you were talking, you know, a lot of us use the language of walking with Jesus, right? That's the metaphor for kind of our relationship with him. And then a lot of times when we are out of relationship with him, we use the metaphor of walking away from Jesus. Those are the two, right? Walking with Jesus, walking away from Jesus or oh, they've walked away from the Lord. It's kind of sometimes a phrase we'll say. But one thought, and one thing I never hear someone say is, oh, they're walking in front of Jesus, right? And I think that's actually a really interesting way to put a lot of our spiritual lives that like, you know you've had of that friend, right? Where you're at the someplace, right? You're on a walk, you're at the park, you're at the mall, wherever it is, and they're walking ahead of you. And it's kind of this disgruntled, hurried state of just, they're busy, they're trying to get somewhere, they're not in the actual essence of the intimacy and the relationship. And I just think that's a question we'll leave with you guys today, as man, are you actually not walking away from the Lord, but are you walking ahead of the Lord? Because that is not how we then live and become like him and do what he does and be in relationship with him and know who he is and know who he has us to be. Because you have to be next to him in relationship with him and walking with him. And let's not use the euphemism walking with him when instead we're actually walking ahead of him. And so that's something I want you guys to reflect on today as we go into the week, take a moment, take some time wherever you're at and think about this problem of hurry. And we're really excited that hopefully as you listen in with us, we can all journey on this together. And next week we'll be back talking about hustle. So we love you guys and we'll see you next week. Yeah, much love. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)