Spiritual dependency in the messiness of life- Dr Harvey Louthan

This third post contains an exert from the chapter by Prof Howard Louthan.  Prof Louthan discusses the complexity of maintaining a balance amongst the many demands of work and life.  His experiences shed light on the challenges of striving to be a successful Christian academic, father, husband and son.  He cautions against thinking we can do everything just because we are Christians and instead we often need to lower our sights.   After decades struggling with these issues he concludes we may need to accept that more often than not we exist in the “messiness of life” which forces us depend on God’s adequacy and turn to Him continually.

Spiritual dependency in the messiness of life

The past two decades of marriage, family and professional life have been a blur of movement too often occurring at breakneck speed.  Though I have attempted to control the pace of life, to balance out my various responsibilities, more often than not I feel that it is all getting beyond me.  Though I have tried to act prudently, to reflect carefully before taking on a project, I do not always succeed and frequently end up over-committed.  Spiritually as well, I have faced parallel challenges.  I entered graduate school with tidy theological categories that though helpful for a time could not in the end encompass and explain the complexities of life.   Without jettisoning Christian essentials, I have come to appreciate the messiness of faith where not all issues are resolved, and ambiguity often remains.

More often than not, I feel hopelessly compromised as a scholar and teacher, as a father, husband and son.   How do I stay faithful with all these demands?   Too often I have responded in one of two ways.  When tired or exhausted at the end of a busy day or a particularly difficult stretch of work, I have given into feelings of hopelessness and guilt, of knowing that I can never measure up to impossibly high standards.  On the other hand, when I am fresher and more energetic, I deceive myself into thinking that I can somehow manage it all.   Neither response is of course appropriate or accurately reflects our true situation.  I am slowly coming to realize that when God calls us to be faithful, he is also calling us to embrace the messiness of life.  Indeed, God wants us to be in a position of spiritual dependency, to acknowledge our inadequacies, limitations and failures.   To feel off-balance is not a bad thing, for it forces all of us to turn daily if not hourly to the one source of adequacy there is in life.

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Howard Louthan (Harvey ‘92) is professor of history at the University of Florida where he teaches with his wife, Andrea Sterk who is also a member of the history faculty.   He specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of Renaissance and Reformation Europe with a particular focus on religion.  His most recent books include Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009) and an edited collection of essays Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World (Oxford, 2012).  Howard and Andrea have a family of three children.