The Idol of Comfort

If you were asked, “what do you need to make you feel comfortable?” what would be the first thing that came to your mind?

Clothes? Temperature in a car or your house? Being close to a loved one? 

Whatever “comfort” may be for each of us, it is important to recognize that it can be an incredibly powerful force that can form and shape our capacity to love others.  Focusing too much on making ourselves comfortable and it can turn into an idol that we would be willing to sacrifice anything for, but when seen through the proper lens we can learn how sacrifice can help us to love better.  

Being comfortable, I think, is something that many of us living in an incredibly wealthy country take for granted.  We can (usually) travel where we want to go, fill ourselves with food when we are hungry, and control the temperatures around us so that we don’t have to endure blistering heat or chilling cold.  While advances in technology that allow certain comforts to exist are surely welcome, it is important that we take time to examine if there is any way that we may be making an idol out of comfort and, in turn, shrinking our hearts and our capacity to love.  

How can something that seems so innocuous pose such a danger to our hearts?

Unfortunately, comfort can easily intoxicate us to the point that our motivations are guided by seeking what makes us least uncomfortable to the point that we can’t really make a gift of ourselves unless certain conditions are met.  Perhaps we won’t invite others into our homes until they are perfectly in order because anything less would make us feel uncomfortable.  In other situations we can become fixated on adjusting the environment around us to the point that we can lose sight of the needs of others until our own (usually superficial) needs are satisfied.  

Perhaps the biggest lie of the idol of comfort is that it is inherently connected with love.  I’m sure we have seen enough commercials that emphasize the warm nostalgia of a childhood memory and the love we may have felt from our families with a certain kind of food, home decor item, or destination.  Fulfilling this obsessive quest for comfort can be another expression of our hearts' neediness for love.  We can become deluded to the point that we believe that if we only had a certain kind of food, environment, or kind of relationship that our hearts would finally feel full and we could move on with building a better life.  

The lie of the idol of comfort is so dangerous because it builds procrastination into our need to love others.  We can start to say the dreaded words, “if only I had” or “if only I was” and believe that love is inherently conditional.  In other words, we can believe the lie that we can only love others if our own needs for comfort are fulfilled first.  We can create an unrealistic dream of our future self that is able to love fully because the conditions for comfort were met, obstacles were removed, and now nothing will get in the way of how we love others.  Living in this fantasy of a future without challenges does nothing but excuse us from having to confront the messiness of reality and the need to love in the midst of an imperfect world.  

As a priest, I am fortunate to be surrounded by people who model love without comfort incredibly well - that is, parents.  

Because our world is immersed in the reality of parenting and families, we can grow accustomed to, and thus take for granted, the beauty of how well mothers and fathers cast aside the allure of comfort in order to care for their children.  In the intimacy of their homes, mothers and fathers are willing to regularly sacrifice a full night’s sleep, privacy, their own sense of hunger, their limited time, and so much more in order to tend to their children in their sickness, fear in the middle of the night, their education and formation, their hunger, and entertainment.  

I think that many parents would quickly dismiss the magnitude of these sacrifices - whether big or small - and claim, “well, it’s no big deal, I have to do these things.”  Simply because something as common as parenting surrounds all of us does not make it any less magnificent.  Our planet is surrounded by beautiful and countless stars, yet we never grow tired of gazing at them. We can see beautiful mountains almost anywhere on earth, yet their majesty is never diminished.  We can run across the vibrantly colored flowers almost daily, yet this does not take away their dignity and appeal.  Simply because something is common does not necessarily make it less valuable.  Parenting, while incredibly common, ought to be viewed through eyes that reverence the incredible work that is being done.  

Not all parents live up to their responsibilities and many can be neglectful or damaging to the lives of their children; however, we cannot forget the countless number of hidden parents who thanklessly sacrifice day after day, not always perfectly, but still with great love.  

This love of parents is paradoxical as it may be believed that sacrifice may lead to a lessened capacity to make a gift of themselves.  We know that other materials in the world, when they are shared, ultimately become diminished until they are unable to give anymore of themselves; however, with love, we really see the opposite.  The more we sacrifice of ourselves in love, the bigger our hearts become.  It is as if our hearts can take in more and more people and more and more needs of others as we learn to share who and what we are.  Conversely, the more we seek after comfort and reject sacrifice, our hearts shrink and our field of vision recognizing the needs of others becomes diminished.  The more we prioritize superficial needs that only serve the idol of comfort, the more we will find it harder and harder to love.  

Living with a heart of sacrificial love keeps us alert and sensitive to the needs of others and can actually put us more in tune with the true needs of our hearts.  Rather than becoming distracted by the idol of comfort and thinking, “if I only had” or “if I only was,” we can now find true satisfaction by recognizing the deepest longing of our hearts - to be loved.  

This, ultimately, is the challenge - are we living only to be comfortable or are we willing to walk  the path of sacrificial love?