The Easy Button

Like most people, I like things easy.  Most of the time.  It’s not that I don’t like a challenge or two.  Challenging, difficult things require energy.  Focus.  Skill.  Perseverance.  Discipline.  And when you successfully complete a challenge there is a sense of accomplishment.  Satisfaction.  Success.  However, I don’t want everything in my life to be a challenge!  Most of the time, as I said, I prefer easy.  So do most people.  You probably do too.

Our whole culture is built around the word ‘easy’.  Take books for example.  A sampling of some titles.  Spanish Made Easy.  Calculus Made Easy.  The Easy Way To Stop Smoking.  The Quick And Easy Way To Public Speaking.  Pathophysiology Made Incredibly Easy.  (How can something that I can’t even pronounce be easy?)  It doesn’t end with books.  How about seminars?  Easy Dental Training.  Business Planning Made Easy.  Easy Event Hosting.  Going Green Made Easy.  Then there are advertisements on products.  Easy Set-Up.  Easy To Use.  Easy To Build.  Easy To Learn.  Easy.  Easy.  Easy.  It’s everywhere.

You want to know why?  People like us.  We love easy.  We crave easy.  Easy sells.  Just ask Staples.  Since 2005 their marketing campaign has centered around their iconic Easy Button.  Click the button.  That was easy.  Their advertising implies that they are a one-stop store that has virtually everything related to office supplies.  Easy does it.

Unfortunately, while we are in love with easy, easy can sometimes be detrimental.  To our health.  To our character.  To our relationships.  To our souls.  The fact is that easy can be the road to ruin and Hell.  Literally.  Consider the following verses.  In the Parable of the Rich Farmer, in Luke 12:19, the farmer says, “And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”  Oops.  He died that same night.  Without God.  Or how about Amos 6:1, “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion.”  These people were completely at ease with sin and unholiness in their lives and in their society.  Obviously not every reference to easy in the Bible is bad.  The point is that there are times when easy is bad.  More than what we think.  Plain and simple.

In my counseling of people over the years easy has rarely worked well for them.  For example, doing nothing is always easy.  People do it every day.  With disastrous results.  Doing the wrong thing is also easy.  It comes natural.  Again, with disastrous results.  You know what isn’t easy?  Doing the right thing.  In this sin-cursed world right doesn’t come easy.  Right is hard.  Difficult.  Challenging.  In fact, I have developed a saying in regard to this that I use over and over in counseling others:

“The right thing to do is the hard thing to do, which is the reason that so few people do it.”
  
See that?  ‘Right’ and ‘hard’ are usually linked together.  Not ‘right’ and ‘easy’.  When someone is talking to me about a problem and tells me that they did something that was difficult for them, 9 times out of 10, it was the right thing to do.

So, we can appreciate the fact that not everything in our lives needs to be difficult.  Thank God that it isn’t!  This is a good thing.  But let’s beware when everything begins to come easy.  When we search out easy.  When we only want to do what it easy.  A life of ease does not build character.  Or produce discipline.  Or bring us closer to God.  It leads in the opposite direction.

Lord, thank you for the easy times in my life.  Times that are smooth.  Good.  Routine.  But help me also to remember that hard and difficult times are good too.  They build me.  And develop me.  And transform me.  And make me more like You.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.