During my lifetime I have heard the cliche repeated again and again “people do not like change.”   I know for my part that I never carry it.  The jingling in my pocket drives me to distraction and I get rid of my coin at the first opportunity.

Many would say, “Me too, I hate change.”  Yet it is my observation that the exact opposite is true.  I believe that people in our culture relish, perhaps even lust, for change.  Why else would we fight for keeping the penny? (http://www.progress.org/archive/fold207.htm et al)  Why is the remote for the television so easy to use?  Why are we always looking for the next “big thing”?

What I believe people in our culture do not like is change they do not control.  Change is ok if I am either the one making the change, or if I am at some level feeling like I have control over or at least input into the change being made.  That is why I don’t like change in my pocket, I cannot make it be quiet at a moment’s notice and I cannot move without it reminding me that it is there…out of my direct control.

For the Christian this cultural dynamic is especially difficult.  The Christian world view states emphatically that only One is truly in control and that He is both the progenitor and controller of all change.  Control for the Christian is more or less regulated to “self-control” which is, in turn, the result of the presence and work of God’s Holy Spirit (Galatians 5.22-25).  Life is full of jingling reminders that  I control nothing outside of  myself and that only as an act of the grace of God.

Perhaps this is part of what God meant when He required me to “walk humbly” with Him (Micah 6.8).  What do you think?