November 12, 2020
If you’ve ever flown on an airplane, then you’ve seen the safety video—the one that tells you how to buckle and unbuckle your seatbelt, how to take cover in the event of a crash, and how to use your seat cushion as a flotation device.
The thing that people remember most from this routine is the instruction to put your own oxygen mask on before you help a young child put theirs on.
When you first heard this, you may have been aghast. Maybe you thought something like, “How selfish! How could you take your own oxygen before helping a frightened, confused child get theirs?”
Despite these reactions, the airline safety instruction has remained the same throughout the decades. You are supposed to put on your oxygen mask before you help anyone else put on theirs.
Why?
Because in order be effective in helping other people, you must help yourself first.
Period. End of story. Until you have helped yourself, you are of very little use to others in need of help. This concept is also true pretty much throughout the world, not just on airplanes.
Unfortunately, the Church has completely bungled this.
Christians are obsessed with service, missions, acts of kindness, charity, donations, and everything in between. None of these things are bad, but if you choose to engage in them, it helps to spend some time analyzing if your efforts are actually effective.
For your efforts to be effective, you need to be approaching these things from a position of actually being able to help. If you aren’t in a position to help, then you shouldn’t participate.
- You shouldn’t donate your money to anyone or to any organization if you don’t have your own finances (debt, savings, investments) in order.
- You shouldn’t donate your time to anyone or to any organization if major aspects of your own life are falling by the wayside because you think you don’t have time to address them.
- You shouldn’t do mission work for anyone or any organization in which you lack the skills, knowledge, or experience to meaningfully advance the goal of the on-the-ground team.
Christians have a very bad habit of discounting all of these realities and rushing off to “serve” or to “give” or to “do mission work” when they themselves have not sorted out their own lives.
The best example of this premature giving is the young church guy who says: “Okay, I now have a heart for this random country in Africa. I want to do long-term mission work there. But first, I need to write a letter to everyone in my church and ask them to pay for it.”
Maybe that guy was you at one point. If you can’t even afford to travel to the people or place you want to help, then you shouldn’t be going.
The reason Christians ignore this is because they have a huge distaste for selfishness. This leads Christians to think that investing in themselves is being selfish. Therefore, they choose to invest in others (as they’ve been told to do) instead of themselves.
The reality is that Christians like this have nothing to invest. A twenty-one year old guy who declares he wants to be a missionary has very little to give. He has minimal real skills, minimal life experience, and a one-dimensional view of the world. However, he’s encouraged by his pastors that he, in fact, is equipped for full-time mission work simply because he’s been a Christian his entire life and has learned how to the share the gospel.
“Loving on people” and “giving love” and “showing love” are what these kinds of people think are tangible and useful skills. They’re not. All the “loving on people” they do during a mission trip really only serves to make their own selves feel validated. Plus, “loving on people” takes a lot of time, and that time would be much better spent investing in themselves first by learning practical real-world skills and gaining multifaceted life experiences.
If any of this describes the outlook or the approach you had during your time in the Church, what should you do now?
Step 1: Fully come to understand that investing in yourself is not selfish.
A lot of men will really struggle to get over this hump. Selfishness has so long been ingrained in us by the Church to be abhorrent.
You need to take some time and truly understand that putting on your own oxygen mask first is the only way you’ll ever be able to make a meaningful difference in the world.
People may try to tell you that spending time and money on yourself is wrong when you should be giving back to your community, but don’t listen to them. Let them go and give and give and give when they haven’t yet put in the time to establish themselves into a position from which to give. They’ll burn out fast and they won’t really be effective anyway.
Step 2: Invest in yourself beginning today.
What does investing in yourself look like? It could be several things.
- Spending your time and money learning modern and relevant skills (IT, AI, healthcare, languages, etc.).
- Spending your time and money in the gym and on quality food to maximize your health and longevity.
- Spending your time and money traveling for you so you can learn about the world you inhabit and to experience the way people in different cultures live their daily lives.
- Spending your time and money cultivating a strong network of friends and a community that can support you and introduce you to new ideas and opportunities.
How much self investment should you do? That’s really up to you, but I would go so far as to say that spending half of your life investing in yourself isn’t unreasonable.
Yes, that means you wouldn’t even think about giving back to the world until you’re at least forty years old.
If you’re halfway through your life already and just now deconverting, then don’t worry. Start investing in yourself today, especially if your old religious beliefs kept you from doing so up until now.
Step 3: Find Your Mission
As you flow through life having experiences and learning new things, eventually you’ll discover something that is very meaningful to you and that you care passionately about. Note that I said that this thing will be meaningful to you—not the Church, not your friends, and not your girlfriend. It doesn’t matter what any of those people think. If it’s meaningful to you, then it’s worth pursuing.
This area where you feel the strong desire to give back could become your Life Mission. I have a lot of say on the topic of your Mission, but that’s outside of the scope of this article. It’s covered here and in my book.
This new Mission of yours, which will likely look very different from what church missions typically are, will be the new driving force behind your life. It’ll be the reason you get out of bed in the morning.
There’s a lot of dense information in this article, and if you execute it, it could take you several years. That’s good. Remember, you should spend a huge amount of time investing in yourself before you invest in anyone or anything else to ensure that, when you do decide to give back, you are actually effective.