Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

--Matthew 19:21-22 (NIV)

When I read or hear this passage, the first emotion that occurs to me is to feel scorn toward the wealthy young man. I mean, here was a guy who met God face to face and said, "No thanks." How dumb is this guy?

Unfortunately, we all know the answer: just as dumb as we are. We all have stuff we refuse to give up. There is, however, within each of us, something of the ascetic. Everyone has an urge within to simplify, to give away all their possessions and chase after . . . something. Whether it's God or rock-n-roll or movie stardom or surfing, there is a natural human tendency to toss everything and go chasing after a dream. When a Christian is called by God to a particular life or task, that feeling can well up inside and drown out everything else: fear, anxiety, the voice of reason, you name it. And that's a great feeling--but does it come from God, or from within ourselves?

Here I am. I'm sitting at my desk at a job I don't particularly like, and all I want is to move forward. I want to leave this place and get on with my life, get on with the journey that I'm stumbling toward. I feel it every morning when I walk from my car to the building, that sense of oppression and impatience: Lord deliver me from my personal Egypt, I think.

But it's not that easy. For one thing, this may not be my personal Egypt. My boss may not be the Pharaoh I make him out to be. Could it be that what God really wants is for me to stay here in my uninspiring job and be a witness to those around me while providing for my family? Because the one major benefit to staying put is that we can keep our nice little house in the suburbs, we can buy the minivan and toaster over and all that other stuff. The kids can get good orthodontia and go to private school and we can pay their tuition at Stanford. We can have an IRA. We can take trips to Disneyworld and cruises to Alaska. We can have nice furniture from a real furniture store. It is alluring; I won't lie. But does that make it wrong? Or is it okay? Either way, I still hate my job, and I still feel called to give it up and go become a pastor.

If it were just up to me, there'd be no problem. I don't care enough about the things of the world at this point in my spiritual journey for it to matter. If I weren't married and didn't have children, I'd be out of here tomorrow and I'd be on my way to the nearest seminary. I'd work as a Youth Minister and live in an efficiency apartment and eat toast for lunch. Right now, to me, the house and the cars and the furniture and the cable TV are just noise, nonessentials that impede me.

But it's not just about me. I have a wife. And she is not so whipped up by God and the excitement of conquering the world that all of these things have ceased to matter. Because they aren't just things. They're also a safety net. They're not evil in and of themselves; they're basically good things. And we worked hard to get them. And just because I woke up one morning and decided that none of it mattered to me anymore, I can't expect her to feel the same way. Did Moses ever ask Zipporah if she wanted to go lead the Chosen People out of Egypt? "But honey, all our friends are here in Midian! And what do we know about the schools in this Promised Land?"

In the United Methodist Church, you go where the bishop sends you. That may be to the job as associate pastor in the city you love and call home. It may be to a church in Marfa, Texas where the air conditioning hasn't worked in five years and there are 10 people in the congregation. It may be to a church in downtown Houston where there are gang signs scrawled on the walls. When you sign up for this job, you agree to go where they send you. Again, this is fine for me (I pretty much don't care where I live as long as I can access the Internet and good coffee), but did my wife and children sign up to spend eight years in Marfa? And is it right for me to ask them to?

My wife is wonderful--she accepts that this is the right path for us. She accepts that we're going to have less money and that we most likely won't get to keep our house, and that we'll probably struggle for a while. She's going to do these things not because she needs to, as I do, but because she's willing to. It's a much larger sacrifice for her. I understand and respect that.

I asked her, "But what if one day you wake up and look at me and say, 'I can't fucking believe you made me do this?'"

She said, "You're not making me do anything. I'm an adult. If I thought I couldn't do it, I wouldn't."

This is one of those times when blind faith is necessary. I said, "Whatever happens, if we're pursuing God and love and goodness, I have to believe that things are always going to work out in one way or another." Even if it means that we learn to be happy with very little, and my girls have to appreciate going to community college, and I have to appreciate that I am not the kind of person that is going to "provide" for his family in the traditional sense. Hopefully I can provide for them in a radically other sense that in the end will be far more meaningful. And hopefully they will respect that choice. Because in the end, it's my choice, which means that I'm the one to blame if it all goes to shit.

But it won't go to shit. Because if nothing else, at least I'll always be able to get a clergy discount on sex toys. And that's something.