The one thing that strikes me each morning is that how quickly my moods can change and that I shouldn’t trust my feelings. I’m not sure where I read it, but someone mentioned that hunger is like a toddler, always needing something. I seem to have a house full toddlers. I want coffee, I want quiet, I want food, I want media. I want. Therein lies the problem. I want. Even if you kick your worst habit, new desires still find their way into your head. The Buddhists almost have my problem nailed down, since the cause of all suffering does seem to stem from desire. However, there is one thing lacking in the Buddhist answer to the problem of suffering, and that is what the divine person of Jesus presents as a better answer.

The problem is this: if Jesus is who he said he is, then we would be insane not to follow him. If he’s not who he said he was, then he was insane and deserves not a second look. Tim Keller mentioned this in a podcast and reminded me of this dilemma. And I need to be reminded over and over, because this is at the center of why I was a religious “None” for so long. This either/or scenario that Jesus presents is hard to handle. One way or another we have to make a choice, that either Jesus told the truth or he didn’t. The default choice is doubt and indifference, that he is not the son of God and the Resurrection did not happen. This is the The Matrix red pill/blue pill scenario, but this is a more important decision than what the modern conspiracy theorists are using this metaphor to sell. Decide that it is a lie, and you wake up each day and ignore the story. He either rose from the dead, or he didn’t, right? This is the question that must be answered by everyone, like it or not. If we do nothing, the default position of doubt is then our selected choice. With this decision, he is lying and it’s all a hoax.

Well, I spent two decades believing that he was lying. That didn’t work out very well for me as I chased so many dead ends. In terms of worldly goals, it worked out fine, great actually, but my soul remained empty through those years. I was spiritually dead. I imagined that I was alive and righteous and “connected” on the internet, but my heart was flatlined. So then I had to slink back and reconsider which pill to take once again. Taking the other pill is much better. Truth be told, I was able to stop taking other kinds of pills (see: Citalopram) once I decided that he was not lying. That alone to me was stunning, absolutely stunning, and I wonder how many others’ mental health would improve if they just gave it a shot. The main difference is that one pill removes meaning from life, and the other pill grants meaning to life.

I know that exercise boosts my mood and fixes me for a bit, but after pursuing various goals of fitness, I know that fitness alone is primarily for my ego, like any other pursuit of pleasure, not for deep fulfillment. I do find the discipline of exercise far better than old habits, like drinking or watching TV or scrolling on websites. Yeah, those really don’t help much of anything in terms of the heart. How many times have I sat on the couch late at night after watching some TV series or movie only to go to bed feeling like I just wasted the evening? Entertainment is like Cinnamon Toast Crunch; so good to consume, but ultimately leaves me empty. Both are best enjoyed in moderation and kept below the more important “Five F’s” that I will explain in a minute.

The year of the pandemic allowed me ample time to consider what is important, and I am grateful for the space that opened up to find my way back to faith. I see triathlons and marathons as a good goal, but now with my ordering of life changed, fitness no longer takes precedence. Before the pandemic, I saw fitness as this high moral good, a righteousness in itself. I felt like it washed me clean somehow, that through my registration I had purchased a modern indulgence for my soul. But now I see that fitness must fall lower, as follows, in my Five F’s:

* Faith

* Family

* Friends/Fellowship/Fraternity

* Fitness

* Finances

Any deviation from that order means I am out of order, like a vending machine that doesn’t vend. Thus the trick is remembering this order, especially when I want to go on a two hour bike ride or 10 mile run, or when I want to binge a TV show on Netflix.

What I want is often wrong. Learning this is easiest by getting your butt kicked around in life. If my faith or my dedication to family fades, or if I neglect friendships, then this will mean I have elevated fitness over those higher F’s. I have done that a lot in my life and I can see the wake of wreckage it leaves. If my marriage comes after anything like drinking or swimming or coaching, then I’m off track. What’s clear to me is that this ordering of F’s is right. I want to get out for a run today, a brief one, because faith, family, and friends have commitments already. Running is an action done for myself and my ego, but it does help boost the other F’s. This is the tightrope to walk, where choices I make tell me where the priorities sit. Fitness helps improve those Faith and Family parts of life, so there is no reason to pretend that all acts done for the ego is somehow bad. I am not a desert monk. No, I’m not nearly as cool as St. Anthony of Egypt. The key of the order is to remember that items lower in the list are not by themselves inherently bad. They are good. But they must never bubble up to the top and become the highest good, the summum bonum, of my life. That is when the title of this blog comes into play: Why Did Peter Sink? Because he was out of order on the Five F’s. But simpler still, the Faith “F” fell out of first place.

There is a way to help keep this order in place, too. There’s a three step recipe described by Word on Fire that seems to help me screw this order to the wall, and it even acts as a good standalone prayer.

* Finding the Center - Christ must be at the center of my life.

* Knowing I am A Sinner - There is a dysfunction that I cannot fix by myself.

* Realizing My Life is Not About Me - Charity and volunteering is the way, and whenever I am thinking of myself, there’s a pretty good chance I’m looking away from God.

I would add a fourth to that and say: 4. Stop looking for approval from anyone but Jesus. Am I feeling agitated by something in this world? If so, my addiction to self is returning. Turn off the computer or phone and return to step 1.

Every run, swim, or bike ride that I do alone can become a time of reflection and even prayer. That I know, as I often go to that “chapel in the heart” anyway while running or biking. I don’t know who to thank for this idea, (maybe Ephraim of Syria, I don’t recall) but I go there quite often when the world is swirling around me.

I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to that chapel while coaching, when the chaos starts to swirl. If you want to see a depiction of hell’s Furies in modern times, attend a youth sports tournament championship game that has gone into overtime. There you will witness a complete disorder of priorities. I’m not talking about the the children, I’m talking about the adults.

The projection of desire by parents onto kids is something that I could elaborate on, oh I would guess, for a few weeks. The reason people are so into children’s sports is because they lack something. They need approval, they want love, but they desire above all honor. None of us are about to be called up to war where we can take up our shield, for God and country, like in The Battle of Maldon, where the Anglo-Saxons got rocked by the Vikings but went down in a blaze of glory. But we are still yearning for that experience and youth sports is the proxy experience. I can watch the change on a parent’s face as bloodless victory nears. I feel like if I threw a T-Bone steak toward their folding chair they would ravage it like a starving wolf in the corner of the gym. For glory and honor, for the victory of our ego over some random parents from another suburb. Following through with The Battle of Maldon, if I replace Æthelgar and Godric in the verse below with people I know it would work today as well as a millenium ago:

So Æthelgar’s son emboldened them all,Godric to the fight. Often he let go of his spear,the slaughtering spear flying into the Vikings,so he went forth, first in that crowd,hewing and maiming, until he perished in the battle.

Godric fought and died for England and became a legend. Little Johnny fights under the mantle of the local gas station or realty office. That ribbon or medal may be cheap in terms of money, but in today’s world is sought like the Ring of Power, as we seek validation in that idol, until the next tournament, next week, on a Sunday usually, where the whetting of the appetites for honor starts all over again.

I’ve watched parents explode in rage, not always at the opposing team, or the referee, but often at their own child. That’s when you can see the truth spill out on how sports actually affects their lives. It’s embarrassing and everyone looks away. Funny how we never approach and ask someone, “What is the order of priority in your life? Is youth sports the highest good, above your family or faith?” That would irritate a lot of people, but might be beneficial in the long run for challenging their notions.

But in that moment when others are losing it, that’s when the chapel within is ready, like a 24-hour neon sign in a bar flashing the words: “Happy Hour”. I can go there and watch the madness happening around me and I ask myself, “Why Did Peter Sink?”

Literally, I do this. If I can extract myself from getting caught up in the moment, I definitely do this. I have several seasons of using this tactic now in the dugout and on the basketball bench. There’s no soundtrack of Ave Maria playing, no cinematic experience, no bathos like the Hallmark Channel movies, there is only a single question to ask myself, to re-center on what is most important so that I avoid going adrift and sinking, to put fear aside and find that radical trust in faith again.

Lest you think I feel sports are bad, I do not. The benefits of sports outweigh the negative, as the kids make friends, they exercise, they understand what teamwork means, they work toward a goal, and they celebrate the ups and downs of wins and losses. Overall, the kids learn many of life’s lessons through sports. It’s just the adults that are insane, and I’m as guilty as anyone of elevating it to an excessive height in the priority of things. I still recall the devastation I felt in the first seasons when a last second shot crushed our hoop dreams. This was actually one of those moments of realizing the disorder of my life, when a group of kids making a basket could cause my sense of the world to crumble. As a Minnesota Vikings and Golden Gophers fan, I should never have fallen into this trap. I should have known well in advance that hanging my ultimate hopes and mood on a sporting event would leave me cold and in the fetal position, yet I still let youth sports feed my ego vicariously to the point where it gave me a false sense of value.

The same goes for fitness. Getting in shape so easily converts from making a self-improvement into a self-love, and then quickly slides over into lust or pride, and I’m sorry to say, a kind of self-worship. Need evidence? Have you heard of Instagram? You know what I’m talking about. It all started with simple gym selfies. Now the clothes appear to be painted into every crack and crevice of the human body, leaving so little to the imagination that Jane Austen’s Victorian readers heads would have have exploded upon eye contact. The pursuit of happiness through fitness or sports or knowledge or drinking - it’s all the same. All of it. It may make you happy for an hour or two, maybe a week, maybe even a year or five years. But eventually it will fail, and then you will wonder why. I certainly scratched my head and wondered why this thing or that thing didn’t satisfy, and usually, before long, rather than examine why, I would move on to another thing and expect the permanent solution to happiness to be there. I wondered why.

And now I can tell you why. It’s not because any of those things are specifically bad in themselves. It is because all of those things were not God. What happens is that there’s a thing I wanted, and if I got it, I was soon disappointed, and if I didn’t get it, I was soon disappointed. And then I was angry or upset or depressed.

Why?

Because it wasn’t God.

Thomas Merton said, “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”

Anything that you put highest in your life that is not God has a shelf life of supermarket milk; it’s good for a while then turns rotten. If you want to get off that treadmill of the pursuit of happiness, if you want a way to be happy not for a week or month or year, then give faith a try - a real try. Do it for a year. For all the quack diets and depression pills and exercise equipment we buy, what would hold you back from trying something that is free?

Exercise in general, without question, is good. It’s very good. The mental assist that physical exercise gives me helps with the second and third F’s, Family and Friends. I believe there is a way to weave this all together, but the danger here is that the self, not the Higher Power, is driving the decision. Pride (A.K.A. honor) is a many-headed hydra that comes back to me in a thousand forms. Cut one head off, and two grow in its place. If I aim to build habits around a Christ-centered life, such that I can deal with whatever challenges lie ahead, I can remain disciplined in faith and not fooled by the shadow-puppets of this world that beckon us toward the four Big Empties: pleasure, honor, wealth, and power.

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