The madness of March basketball was as crazy as ever this year, and yet the championship game couldn’t have been more disappointing. At the end of what was otherwise a very exciting tournament, I was hit with the same thought I had at the end of the college football season – IS THAT IT?
All of the excitement leading up to one moment of crowning glory – one team is left celebrating; all others leave disappointed. What’s worse, I’ve had a favorite team win championships before, and even the excitement of the ultimate win is fleeting. What about next year? Will we get a good recruiting class? Will we be able to repeat? We barely pause to enjoy the win before it is back to the pursuit of another that will also leave us either disappointed or with fleeting satisfaction.
This is not a post about the futility of sports or their inability to provide lasting satisfaction. I love sports. What the tournament and its abrupt ending got me thinking about is this: we are consumed with the pursuit of what we think will satisfy us. When we catch the thing we are pursuing, often times we find that the pursuit and the thrill of the catch was more exciting and enjoyable than the possessing of the object of our pursuit.
This is especially innate in men. We are born loving to hunt, to pursue, to chase. The more difficult the hunt or the challenge, the more we want to rise up to overcome that challenge as a testament to our manhood.
This is true in sports. It’s true in hunting game. It’s true in pursuing a business deal. I am not saying that we do not enjoy the wins. I'm saying that we enjoy the process of winning more than the win itself because with the win always comes the letdown of not being as satisfied as anticipated or for as long as anticipated. When we find that the object of our pursuit didn't satisfy us according to our expectations, however unrealistic those may have been, we move on to another pursuit.
The implications for men and their marriages are staggering if men view(ed) their getting married as the goal of their pursuit of a wife. Once the wedding day is over, so is the excitement of the pursuit. As soon as the excitement of being a newlywed wears off, men go on to put other pursuits above their wives like business, a "successful" church plant or some ministry challenge, or in many cases, other women.
They'll explain exchanging her for their business as trying to provide for the family, and the prominence they give to the ministry as "prioritizing the Lord's work," but really the first two examples can be just as adulterous as the third. All in the name of a good chase - the pursuit of what they think will satisfy them at the time.
How can this problem be avoided though? How are you, as a man, supposed to flip a switch and change your entire disposition from loving a good pursuit to being content with your catch “till death do us part”?
If these questions resonate with you, you most likely have a twofold problem:
-Your pursuit of your wife was the primary pursuit of your life
-You misunderstood the goal of your pursuit of a wife
We’ll deal with these in the next post. To be continued …
No comments:
Post a Comment