Until It Feels Good

Daniel Kahnemn has proposed what he calls the “Law of Least Effort” in human thinking and acting. By this he means “that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate toward the least demanding course of action.”[1] Thus, most of our lives are lived on autopilot, in the zone of minimum necessary consciousness. That’s useful for getting through an ordinary day, but it’s not really mindful and meaningful living.

St. Irenaeus once wrote that “the glory of God is the human fully alive.” We Christians believe that God has created us for fully human life. In the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus says this even more clearly. “I came that they may have life,” he tells us, “and that they may have life in abundance.” This sounds nothing like the Law of Least Effort. In fact, the abundant life is the life fully aware of God’s gifts to us and our profound opportunity to use those gifts as co-creators with God.

The fullness of life is found when we are conscious, aware, intentional and reflective. The fullness of life is the opposite of autopilot. The fullness of life requires that we resist the Law of Least Effort. We have spent significant portions of this book identifying our biases and blind spots when it comes to church stewardship. These biases and blind spots are the outcomes of the Law of Least Effort. They are the results of being less than fully alive moment to moment.

Psychologists know how this “fully alive” business feels and even, to some degree, how it works. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (more simply known as “Mike”) has made a life’s work of the study of what he calls “flow.” Flow is that experience of time and activity where time is dilated, sometimes to point of stopping. It is that moment that can last for hours without our noticing. It is that bit of work that is so engaging and absorbing that we lose awareness of the larger world and of ourselves. It is that hobby or conversation or song or painting that takes us out of ourselves and into a larger place in the Creation. It is a little bit of heaven. It is a time when we are most fully alive.

Gratitude can be a way into such moments. This is one of the benefits of giving. I have often given people a simple chain of thinking. Do you want to be happy? Be grateful. Do you want to be grateful? Be generous. Gratitude takes us out of autopilot and into a deeper experience of God’s life and our life. Robert Emmons writes, “It is gratitude that enables us to receive and it is gratitude that motivates us to return the goodness that we have been given. In short, it is gratitude that enables us to be fully human.”[2]

The old cliché is that we should give until it hurts. That is completely wrong-headed. Instead, we should give until it starts to feel good. Most of us don’t give enough of ourselves and our resources to really notice any difference in our lives. Such minimal acts of giving leave us on autopilot, less than fully alive, and thus less than fully human. I don’t know what amount or kind of giving will take you out of yourself and into the zone of happiness, but I know that you can figure that out.

When I first started giving for the mission and service of the church, I gave about what the average Lutheran Christian gives—about two percent of my income. We began a program of “growth giving.” We increased our giving by one percent of our income each year until we reached our ten percent goal. That was highly impactful and spiritually meaningful for a while. Then we became habituated to that amount, and it lost its impact. Our church giving became another bill to pay.

Fortunately for us, one of our churches entered a building program. We were asked to consider giving above and beyond our regular giving in order to respond to the needs of the building program. We did so, and we noticed the difference. In fact, we became conscious and mindful givers once again. That was a source of joy and blessing. Once the building program was over, we continued to give the additional amount to the general fund of the church. We were reluctant to let go of the blessings we have found in the additional giving.

That was my story. I have found that Jesus opens ways for us to give until it feels good, if we are willing to pay attention. So I encourage you to watch for those ways and then respond.

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[1] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, page 35.

[2] Robert Emmons, “Pay It Forward,” in The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness, page 85.