January 25, 2015
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Do you know how many different kinds of toilet brushes Amazon sells? Not just 10 or 20 or even 500. Amazon sells 1,161 different kinds! That’s a lot of scrubbers.
There was woman named Jane Porter who discovered this when she spent an evening trying to choose a toilet brush for her new apartment. After nearly an hour reading countless and contradictory reviews of far too many choices, she felt grumpy and tired and simply gave up. She was suffering from “decision fatigue.” Fortunately, after a good night’s sleep, she went out to her local dollar store and happily bought the only toilet brush it offered. The one brush turned out to be the right brush.
We love having choices in 21st century America. Look at how our supermarkets or today’s Target stores have become—aisles after aisles of products to choose from. You almost need to put on running shoes to get from one end of the store to the other. But too many options can exhaust us. Even worse, they can make us unhappy and cause us to flee from making decisions. Researchers have called this “choice overload.”
And it’s not just choosing toilet brushes that can overwhelm us. Even worse, an abundance of choices in our professional or vocational lives can paralyze us.
Years ago, if your last name was Baker, you would work as a baker. The Carpenter family labored as carpenters. Smiths were smiths, Potters made pottery, and Farmers worked in the field.
But today, a young woman named Baker can be anything from an attorney to a zoologist. A man named Carpenter might choose to build houses, but he could also join the Coast Guard, work for a cable company or be a crime scene investigator. A person like me named Ng doesn’t have to be an electrical engineer. There are more than 2100 occupations available today, far exceeding the number of toilet brushes on the market.
The first Chinese who came to America were limited to jobs like building the railroad or helping to dig for gold. Later, Chinese became merchants, importers, and restaurant workers. In time especially after World War II, many became teachers, postal workers, Caltran employees, Navy shipyard workers, accountants and bankers, etc. Then when my generation came around, we became engineers, dentists, physicians, lawyers, school principals, architects and so on. The next generations have even more career options before them. We have more career choices now than ever before as Asian Americans.
We have lots of choices now. I have said many times that in America with our liberal arts education, we sometimes end up with a thousand knives but not one knife is sharp. We have a lot of knives to use and hopefully one of them might cut some butter! We all know of young adults who after going to a four-year college graduate with no understanding of what they want to do. Are they experiencing “choice overload?”
We have learned that as the number of options increases, the cost—in time and effort—of making good choices also increases. Imagine spending a whole evening deciding on what toilet brush you want. As we are presented with more and more choices, the level of uncertainty we have about our final choice arises. The more choices we have, the more anxiety we feel about someday regretting the choice we have made.
I confess that when I go shopping let’s say for a pair of pants. I would go from one store to another until I have amassed all the information about style, color, prices and brand. After all of this running around in the mall, I would then go and make my purchase. After bringing my pants home, I would end up comparing prices when the advertisements come in the newspapers for days. Too many choices that increases the cost in time and effort to buy one pair of pants!
There was a famous jam study done in Palo Alto where they had two tasting booths set up in a grocery store. One contained six flavors of jam and the other contained 24 flavors of jam. People were six times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they saw six than if they saw 24. Too many choices can be paralyzing.
From toilet brushes to jams to careers, we have a lot of options these days. And such seemingly endless options can lead to uncertainty, anxiety and decision fatigue. As the old saying goes, “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”
Too many options can be too much of a good thing.
The lesson from Psalm 62 today is attributed to David who is crying out to God when his opponents assail him. In this situation, David sings of his confidence in God that inspires us to also trust in God, who is steadfast, a loving refuge when oppressive people or circumstances threaten to shake us up.
From this Psalm, we can see the best path forward that can help us to be happy and decisive and free of decision fatigue. Psalm 62, a song of trust in God alone, gives us three words of advice: Wait, pray, and obey.
And if we obey, says the psalmist, then God will repay. When exhausted by excessive choices, the Lord provides a path to rest and peace. Don’t all of us want that in our lives? Don’t all of us want to make decisions in this New Year that would lead to a faithful life?
Wait
First, wait. The Psalmist is not in a rush to make big decisions. Instead, he says, “For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him” (v. 5). So often we feel pressure to make choices quickly, whether we are rushing to declare a major in college, or jumping at the first job that’s offered to us. But when the choices are serious, we almost always have time to wait.
So how should we wait? Wait in silence. Wait for God. Wait for the One who is our source of hope. The Psalmist says that God “is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God” (vv. 6-7).
This God is worth the wait. As you know when I was a younger man in my 20s when I first came to FCBC, I wasn’t patient enough to wait. I spend three years with you and decided to leave and accept a position in Valley Forge. After realizing that I short-changed you in the 1970s, I decided that I would not make this mistake again. I waited and served in Valley Forge for over 20 ½ years. And when I returned to FCBC in 1998, I waited and sought your patience with me as your senior pastor to remain with you for 17 years. This God is worth the wait. You are worth waiting for!
When we wait in silence and trust our rock-solid God to help shape our decisions, we usually make a better choice. The same is true when we’re wrestling with a big decision and decide to “sleep on it.” The woman who was so stressed out by toilet brush choices waited until the morning when she had new energy to decide.
There was a Columbia University study that found that judges were more likely to give a defendant a more favorable ruling in the beginning of the day than they were at the end of the day. Wait until the morning to make serious decisions.
Pray
Waiting in silence is not enough—it’s also important to pray. “Trust in God at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us” (v. 8). The second lesson is to pray. We pour out our hearts when we ask for guidance in our decision-making, and when we pray about the various options that lie before us. Taking the time to discern God’s will can help us to eliminate a number of options that will lead us in the wrong direction.
When we impose restraints on the variety of options facing us, we can actually make a better decision. You can do this by eliminating choices that don’t align with your understanding of the Bible or don’t fit your theology or Christian behaviors. If an option doesn’t line up with your understanding of God’s will for your life, scratch it off your list.
Letting yourself have fewer options can actually lead you to a better outcome. Pray about it. Pour out your heart before God, and let the Lord be your guide and your refuge.
Obey
Finally, after you have waited and prayed, it’s time to obey. In verse 10, we read, “Put no confidence in extortion and set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” What this means is that make sure that any decision you make includes obedience to the laws of God and the teachings of Jesus. Don’t let anyone persuade you with extortion or vain hopes or if you suddenly came up with some fortunes that you place all your confidence on possessions.
Another study from Columbia University discovered that those who have clear constraints or boundaries on choice versus those who have more choices in their religious practices are more likely to be at peace with oneself. When there are more constraints on choice, people feel more control over their lives. So one of the keys to happiness is to obey the laws of God and the teachings of Jesus. You’ll have fewer choices, but you’ll end up with a feeling of more control over your life.
To illustrate this point, think about the meaning of Christian living. Before you became a Christian, you might have occasionally used a derogatory word but now that you are a Christian, you are aware that your words and deeds reflect your love of Christ.
Before you became an active Christian having publically professed your faith in Baptism, you could have stayed home in your comfortable pajamas watching a church service on the TV, but now that you are a following of Christ, you followed him all the way from your home to church this morning.
You may have fewer choices, but you’ll end up with a feeling of more control over your life. You become increasingly aware of what is expected of you and how you would act in all seasons of living. The end result is that you are happier when you obey the laws of God and the teachings of Jesus.
Repay
Once you wait, pray and obey, then God will repay. The Psalmist says, “Once God has spoken, twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord. For you repay to all according to their work” (vv.11-12).
These verses remind us that God rules the world in power and in love, and that God is working for good in our lives. When we trust this God, we’re given the gifts of rest and peace. In fact, the word “repay” in this verse is related to the Hebrew word shalom, which means “peace.” So an alternative translation of this verse could be: “For God will give peace to all according to their work.”
God will give peace to us, according to our work. If we choose peace, we will be given peace. If we choose justice, we will be given justice. If we choose mercy, we will be given mercy.
God repays all according to their work. In a world of decision fatigue, Psalm 62 invites us to trust in God at all times. Again, verses 5-6, “For God alone my soul waits in silence for my hope is from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.”
Our challenge is to trust in “God alone.” To wait, pray, obey…and believe that God will repay. This kind of faith is the secret to making good choices in every area of life, while avoiding the stress of decision fatigue.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “Choices. Choices make the difference. Two people are in the same accident and severely wounded. They did not choose to be in the accident. It happened to them. But one of them chose to live the experience in bitterness, the other in gratitude. These choices radically influenced their lives and the lives of their families and friends. We have very little control over what happens in our lives, but we have a lot of control over how we integrate and remember what happens. It is precisely these spiritual choices that determine whether we live our lives with dignity.
In the face of many options, there is only one Lord. When we choose God, God alone, we receive the blessings of rest and peace.
Let us pray.
Thank you, O God for giving our lives so many options to choose from in this world. We have been blessed and provided with opportunities that are beyond our imaginations. And while we may need to figure out how to constrain our choices to be able to make good decisions, teach us to wait, to pray and to obey your laws and the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. In faithful hope, we pray that you would repay us when we choose peace, we would receive peace. When we choose justice, we would receive justice. And when we choose mercy, we too in your eyes would also receive mercy from you. In Christ, we pray. Amen.