Obsessionism

    It’s that time of year, that time just between the scintillatingly drowsy summer and the numbingly focused winter.  These are the days when I add event after repeating event into my calendar and marvel at how many blank spaces there are that I know will be filled by study time, casual social time, time spent wondering how to best spend my time and more time wondering why I didn’t spend my time as well as I should have.  Right now though, I’m cautiously optimistic, mostly because even if I am overwhelmed by the amount of work I have, I think I’ll enjoy my work and the people I work with.  As far as I can tell, there are only two things that are clear in foresight and hindsight, the quality of the work you do and how much you enjoy it.  I’m using a pretty broad definition of work.  It could include conversations, hobbies, and games along with manual labor and paper shuffling.

    As I schedule my next few months and make decisions about what is important enough to devote a few hours to every week, priorities are an unfortunate necessity.  I’ve never really liked prioritizing.  Of course I have preferences.  I like certain foods and flavors more than others. I have friends that are closer than others whom I feel more comfortable around.  Some topics interest me more than others.  But I’ll eat just about anything.  At a party I usually talk to the person within the shortest radius.  My bookshelf holds Emerson’s Essays, War and Peace, and Black simultaneously.  On the other hand, those are outliers and diverse bookshelves are pretty much standard issue at a liberal arts college like Wheaton. 

    There’s an exchange in National Treasure that goes something like this:

Riley: Anyone crazy enough to believe us isn’t going to want to help.

Ben: One step short of crazy, what do you get?

Riley: Obsessed.

Ben: Passionate.

    So let’s say passionate is one step short of obsessed.  It’s an interesting thought.  Passion is good, drive allows you to accomplish things, but somehow too much passion is no longer useful.  In fact, it’s annoying, counterproductive and dangerous.  We only use the word obsessed in extreme cases.  If someone is willing to remortgage their house to see a Hannah Montana concert we say they’re obsessed.  If it isn’t as extreme, we might say their priorities are out of order.  Or an economist like Andrew would say that they are not accurately balancing the costs and benefits.  It’s as if they picked one value and made it into a trump.  In card games if a suit is a trump it means it’s value is unnaturally inflated.  So a two of spades might beat a king of diamonds.  The king is really a higher card, but the two of spades is trumped so it can beat anything from another suit.  Most people think off houses as more valuable than concert tickets, but apparently somebody assigned trump status to Hannah Montana.

    Some trumping may be appropriate.  For example, heavenly priorities trump earthly priorities.  Regardless of the earthly benefits, if an action causes spiritual harm, the net affect is negative.  For example people have a spiritual element to them.   Money does not.  If your closest friend was going to die unless you paid all of your money to save their life, would the amount of money really make any difference?  Natural human perspectives blow monetary, physical benefits out of proportion.  To be really balanced, we have to compensate by underemphasizing things like financial success and personal achievement.  Physical training is of some value, but there are bigger obstacles out there than defensive linemen.

    I think any sort of “-ism” implies an obsession or at least an overemphasis.  For example, a nationalist will tend to put the good of the country above the good of the world or their community.  A pragmatist forgets that morality and aesthetics are valuable.  Relativism takes the true ideas that objects and ideas can be viewed from different perspectives and it declares that there is no universal perspective.

    I started thinking if I would classify myself as any kind of “–ist.”  Interestingly, no form of the words Christian or Evangelical contains the suffixes –ist or –ism.  However, in the third chapter of the Dictionary, I found some terms like “Calvinism,” “Conservatism” or “Constitutionalism” which didn’t bother me much.  Afterwards I started noticing a pattern.  In general, people who claimed the term “Calvinism” tended to place a lot of emphasis on the doctrines of predestination and depravity.  Meanwhile, others who held to the same beliefs but seemed to have their list of priorities in better order preferred to refer to themselves as “reformed” or as “believers in the doctrines of grace.”

    I’m not saying that it’s always wrong to be an –ist.  there probably are some good –isms that I’ve passed over.  In fact, I would love to see some counterexamples in the comments.  But in the English language –isms tend to be used for obsessions.  Meanwhile as evangelicals hunt for idols to tear down in their lives, might I humbly suggest that they double check their –isms to make sure they have not expanded beyond their proper place.