Passion is Over-Rated

Recently someone asked me to take on something that would require a fairly significant commitment, so I told him I’d need to think about it and get back to him.

It was something I was capable of doing, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. One of the first thoughts that came to mind was, “Is this something I’m really passionate about?” You may be wondering, “why would he ask himself that?”

Well, several years ago in Christian circles, it became fashionable to teach people about their spiritual gifts. We were told, “If you want to know what you should be doing, figure out what your ‘spiritual gifts’ are and then do them.” There were even tests you could take to help you figure out what your gifts are. I must admit that I’ve taken a few of them (I needed to take more than one to find the one that gave me the results I liked), and even administered them for others, and helped counsel people about their gifts. It’s a great way to convince people join church committees. At the same, a few things have nagged at me.

• If an atheist took a spiritual gifts test, would he score a zero?
• How do you decide the difference between a gift and a talent?
• The list of “gifts” is kind of odd for today’s needs. Churches would be better served if they added things like accounting and baby-sitting as spiritual gifts. They’d get a lot more help with the finance committee and in the nursery.

Around the same time corporations and popular culture started picking up the same theme, only they all talked about “connecting with your passion” instead of with your spiritual gift, but I suspect the same consultants started both movements.

At work, people talk a lot about passion. This used to mean they talked about who was seeing who, but now it means they talk about being passionate about things like systems development methodology, or about lean and agile processes…Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Now the main thing people want to know when they ask you something is, “are you passionate about this?” because they assume that if you are, it make you more effective, and management all wants passionate people in their jobs. To succeed, you learn the lingo.

So now you know why, “Is this something I’m really passionate about?” was one of the first things I thought to ask myself when I was trying to make up my mind about what to do. I could have asked myself numerous other things: how much time will it take? Will it involve being out of the house during ‘Scrubs’ (wait, I have TiVO, it doesn’t matter anymore)? Do the other people involved with this effort annoy me? What would Jesus do? A million things I could have asked myself, and this is what I came up with.

I cringed because I realized how much I’ve internalized this belief even though I know that passion is highly over-rated as a decision-making criterion.

Have you seen “American Idol”, or “American Inventor”? Those shows prove over and over again that passion isn’t much of an indicator at helping people figure out what they should be doing. Every week delusional people get up and say that singing is their passion, when their passion should really be being mute. On American Inventor one guy even sold one of kidneys to get money to invest in his really dumb idea. He went into despair when the judged told him his idea was not very good. But then his passion got a hold of him: “I’ll show you. Some day I’ll be on top of the world with this (whatever it was)!” And he left only to continue in his delusions. You hear the same thing on Idol. “Simon is an idiot, I’ll be a star!” You just wish someone had told these people the truth.

After I cringed I thought about Jonah and Moses. Now there were two guys who had zero passion for the plans God had in store for them. God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach. Jonah hated the Ninevites and didn’t want to do it because he was afraid God’s compassionate message would win over the people of the city and he wanted them to rot. As some of you may have heard, Jonah ran in the other direction and God sent him back to Nineveh by way of a big fish. And sure enough, the people of Ninevah all turned to God and Jonah was steamed, so steamed he wished he was dead.

God had a big job in mind for Moses. “Set My people free” is a tall order, and Moses knew he wasn’t up to it. He argued with God. “Hey, I stutter…No one will listen to me!...I’m really not all that bright…Surely you could find someone better able to do this.” On and on. God told Moses to quit calling him Shirley and then patiently answered all of his objections. Moses was stuck. The rest, as they say, is ancient history.

If I did only what I was passionate about, I’d never get off the couch. I’m really passionate about laying around doing nothing.

As I reflected on all that, it made me realize how we have taken passion and gone way overboard with it. I think it’s time to back off and develop a new fad.

• Sometimes you should do something because it’s a good opportunity, even if you’re not all that excited about it.
• Sometimes you should do something because it needs doing, even if you don’t want to (I believe that’s called “being a mature adult”).
• Sometimes you shouldn’t do something because you’re already overcommitted, and it would be wrong to take on the new thing even if you are passionate about it, because it would hurt the things you are already doing.
• And more than anything, if you are passionate about something, your biggest prayer should be that God will bring brutally honest people into your life to prevent your passion from killing you.

So are you wondering what I decided to do? I decided to not take on the new thing. I just wasn’t that passionate about it.