Your Agenda

The word agenda is a plural word from Latin that means "things to be done." Let's poke around this word a little.

First, "things to be done" implies that they are things that are presently undone. But more than just undone, they are things that should be done (in the opinion of the agenda maker). Think of the agenda for a meeting - it's a list of things that aren't yet done (otherwise they wouldn't be on the agenda!) but they are things that should be done (otherwise they wouldn't be on the agenda!). The agenda helps those in the meeting "stay on task," rather than rabbit trailing onto something else. Agendas can be good things.

Second, my agenda is my personal plan. It's the list of things that I think should be done. These can be things that I will get done or someone else, but I still want to see them get done. Royals in the playoffs is on my agenda, Chiefs winning a playoff game is on my agenda, bicycling regularly is on my agenda. Again, there's nothing wrong with having an agenda, and in fact, having an agenda is necessary. What would we accomplish if we didn't have some form of agenda?

Some people can be described as "agenda-driven," which usually carries a negative connotation. Sure, it could just mean someone who has a plan and is diligent about accomplishing it, but more often it refers to someone who will bowl over others in pursuit of that agenda and ignore anything not on the agenda.

Then of course there is also the "hidden agenda," where someone has an undisclosed plan, but acts as if his or her plan was something else. For example, a young suitor who opens the door for a woman not because he wants to be polite, but because he wants to be noticed by the woman's daughter.

The downside of agenda is when one's agenda prevents him or her from valuing good things that don't happen to promote the agenda. It happens in every corner of life, such as in theology. A man has a certain set of theological beliefs about secondary matters, but holds those beliefs firmly. Whenever a point is made from Scripture that challenges that agenda, rather than a thoughtful reconsideration of his beliefs, he ignores or attacks that point in order to preserve his theological agenda. Another example is politics. A woman has a particular political agenda, but when someone of a different political stripe raises a valuable point, rather than politely comparing values over coffee, unclever labels are flung at each other and then comes the highly effective "unfriending." Agendas like these often are some form of an -ism. -Isms are not a set of goals, in most cases, but agendas (a specific set of plans to accomplish goals). The political left (-ism) and political right (-ism) could have the same goal of job growth, but vastly different agendas to achieve it.

Relationships are frequently sacrificed to maintain one's agenda. When "staying on task" becomes more important than "staying on what matters," agendas have gone from helpful to combative. They are no longer "things to be done," but rather "things that I've made more important than they ought to be." What's the Latin word for that? (inflatius?)

One night, you decide that you want to go out for a nice Italian dinner (your goal). So, you choose a place you read about called Mezzano's. You check on line, and send the address to your smartphone to map out your path (your agenda). As you are following the nice direction lady living inside your phone, your spouse texts a friend about your plans and the friend says that you really should try Meglioni's because the gnocchi is so much better there. Your goal has not been challenged, but your agenda has. Now you have a choice:

1. Keep to my map and go to Mezzano's ("average") to accomplish my agenda.
2. Map a new route to Meglioni's ("better") to accomplish my goal. Rerouting!

It seems like a pretty easy choice for many of us. Good gnocchi is good gnocchi, and that's my goal. But when it comes to our theology, our politics, and our other -isms, rerouting is all but easy, and often because we've confused our agenda with our goal. Goals are the what: things like justice, freedom, rights, transformed lives, generosity, unconditional love, alleviation of poverty, etc. Agendas are more about the how. When we confuse the how with the what, we've lost sight of the goal.

When your agenda is challenged ("try a different restaurant"), it's easy to react as if your goals are being challenged ("eat Greek food"). When this happens, ask what is really being challenged - my goal or my agenda? If your goals are not being challenged, perhaps your agenda needs to be realigned to better achieve those goals. A challenge like that is a good thing!

But if your goal is what truly is being challenged, you're now faced with one of two possibilities: A) your goals need to improve, or B) you need to stand firm (even if your agenda needs to change).

In order to sort this out, however, we've got to understand the difference between our goals and our agendas. If we get those confused, we'll end up eating mediocre gnocchi for the rest of our lives.

With deep grief I have watched the events surrounding the Ferguson, MO, case and the Eric Garner case. I grieve over the loss of life, regardless of circumstance. I grieve over those who responded with violence, regardless of reason. I grieve over the angry divisiveness, heartlessness, and bitter words exchanged in the streets and online. I grieve that, no matter how you look at these stories, race is still an open-wound issue in our time.

I'm not going to tell you who I think is right or wrong, and I won't tell you who you should think is right or wrong, because that would reduce what you should think down to a single idea. The issues are complex, and I would hope that every one of us has a complex, even conflicting set of thoughts about them.

In all this, I have observed that people responded to the same set of facts based on how they were already bent. In other words, if I knew your socio-political leanings before these events occurred, I could have quite accurately predicted your responses to them. The facts of the case are the facts of the case, but how people responded to those facts was overwhelmingly conditioned by what they already believed before the facts were presented.

In other words, the facts matter less than our preconceived narratives. We all have agendas - things we want to happen, ways we want to be followed, structures we want in place. We have a narrative in our minds of how things have been and ought to be. Sadly, the real lives of the real people involved in real events are merely props to affirm the narratives in our minds. We're using them ... and their tragedies ... to affirm what we already believe. It doesn't matter which side of these issues people are on; I observe the same phenomenon in both directions.

Facts should change us, not vice versa. But we're letting it happen. How else could our differing responses be so easily predictable before the facts even came to light? The facts could have been different, but our respective conclusions would have been the same! And we're pretty angry about these "facts" - even though they don't really matter.

It's not just these two events. The same thing happens daily with politics, religion, international relations, and of course sports. It's not just them who do this; it's us. No sense in pointing fingers - both sides of every issue are filled with rhetoric that could be scripted without looking at a single fact.

Jesus once said that even if a man rose from the dead and warned people, they wouldn't listen. Facts don't matter - they just get repurposed. Therefore, the facts of your life don't matter, either, because my narrative is already set. I'll twist your story to fit my narrative, so you don't really matter.

The only way I can be different than this is to allow people to mess up my narrative.

When I was a young kid, we didn't have any pets. Somehow, I had it in my mind that dogs and cats were the same animal, but that dogs were the boys and cats were the girls. (To save my own life, I will not explain how that conclusion actually makes made some sense.) Our neighbors had a cat and a dog ... but the cat was male and the dog was female! That totally messed up my young narrative! I fought it, but eventually I allowed reality to change my narrative. The only way I could retain my narrative would have been to slander the reputations those two animals. (Sound familiar?)

Allowing your narrative to be changed doesn't mean you have to put your core beliefs on the chopping block. Whatever core beliefs are true need not change, even when the narratives must. Even though I have discovered halfway decent people who graduated from KU, I don't have to abandon my core belief in the absolute superiority of Mizzou. They changed my narrative, but not my core belief!

This is especially crucial when we consider our kids, who encounter narrative-busting people every day. If our narrative fails to accommodate the variety of lifestories they eat lunch with and study algebra together with, they will abandon the narrative - they will not abandon the busters. And if they abandon the narrative, they are far more likely to abandon the core beliefs you want to pass on.