One thing we all long for is simplicity. We’re looking for ways to reduce—to make the main things the main things and ways to push unimportant things to the side, or perhaps, completely out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind, we say. We say it over and over, a mantra, a prayer. Except saying it fills up our mouths with so many words that a simple thought becomes something complex—a mouthful of meaningless words recited in hopes that we would remember what’s important. We’re left with the mantra; the ‘important thing’ has evaporated. Sometimes simple is overrated: sometimes we need to embrace mystery.
Great Leaders Embrace Mystery
The trouble with simplicity is that it rarely sits well with love. In an effort to embrace simplicity, we edit, we hack away at, the extraneous, looking for the essential. Followers of Jesus usually get down to love—but love is always connected to people, and people are almost never simple.
People are complex. People are hectic. People are wandering, staggering through life like a drunk man in the dark who is looking for a bed that is hiding from him. Even people who are successful and ‘with it’ and educated and ‘saved’ are erratic—often the sparks of genius are combustable and burn through relationships, leaving loved ones hot and smoking, the unfortunate recipients of ‘winning.’
I’m not sure that simple is an attainable goal, or even the right goal. Rather than ‘simple,’ as followers of Jesus, we should be looking for ‘meaningful.’ Because we’re committed to the way of love, there’s a really good chance that it’s going to be complicated, but it can be meaningful too.
