Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression - The Price of Inspiration

The Price of Inspiration

Written by Heather von Doehren

Monday, 17 March 2008

This week our Assistant Editor Heather von Doehren talks about money, inspiration, and the question of achievment.

I’ve been having trouble getting an email out of my head that I recently received from someone who had just discovered our website. The subject line of the email read “Relief…or maybe not” and the body of the email opened with the answer “maybe not because I can’t afford to buy my way into this site.”

I’ve been working with this journal since the beginning, and I have to say that the number of angry emails we receive can be very discouraging. I’ve been told that we’ll always receive the angry author emails, and that’s just to be expected. When an author pours their heart and soul (and in this case their faith) into their work, I expect that not everyone will understand that a rejection isn’t a rejection of the author, but a rejection of one particular piece. What surprises me the most, though, is the number of complaints we receive about either the price of our journal, or the fact that we’re even asking a price for it in the first place.

So maybe we should take a moment to respond:

The only thing on this website that does cost consumers money are the books we sell, and let’s face it . . . printing is not cheap. Everything you see on this site that is free (the website, the Relief Writers Network, the content from editors and writers, etc.) and everything that you may not see (web hosting, database development, paper, postage, ink, etc.) is provided entirely by our subscribers and donations—the largest of which are provided by the staff here at Relief, people who have other full-time jobs who give up their nights and weekends (and sometimes their paychecks) all in the name of keeping this journal going because they believe in this endeavor. We are not backed by a church, a foundation, or any governmental or educational institution at this time. As much as we may like to send you a free book, we aren’t able to keep the journal afloat if everything is free.

Back to the original email:

To give him credit, the emailer did state that he enjoyed what he did see here (the free content, of course) and that he was “truly” inspired. And then I began to wonder . . .

. . . is inspiration ever free?

What it is about our society that demands that anything inspirational should be free? How many times have we sat in the back of church awestruck and then let the collection plate pass? How many times have we paid a small fortune to fly thousands of miles to witness the beauty of a sunset over crystal clear water (or opaque mountains if that’s your thing) and then complain about the city spending money on own community? How many times have we been reluctant about parting with the American tax dollar if it means supporting schools or providing better health care for those who have none?

Everything comes at a cost.

In its first weekend alone, the movie College Road Trip grossed over 13 million dollars, for crying out loud! Why is it we are willing to pay a ton of money to be entertained, but to inspire or be inspired . . . well, the easy answer is that we just can’t afford it, don’t have enough time for it. I am not free from guilt here, either.

Over the past several years, I have felt frustrated by my church’s inability to inspire me. When I first became Christian and starting attending church, there wasn’t a day that would go by when I didn’t leave awestruck, crying, and completely changed—inspired if you will—by the message that God and his people had presented to me for one hour while sitting in a chair. And because I had been inspired, I went out fired up to spread that same inspiration. But the novelty of this kind of passive inspiration is fleeting. Several years have gone by, and what used to inspire me now sounds redundant, ordinary, and wholly uninspired. And rather than searching for what has changed in me, I throw blame at the concrete entity “The Church” for not being more inspirational or more relevant to my little life. And I’m ashamed to admit, I stopped attending as regularly, which also meant I stopped tithing regularly. And I’ve got to tell you, not staying focused on a regular giving plan has caused me to stop being focused on what (or better…who) I give up my time and money for. Too many followers have given up far more than what I’ve ever been asked to give. And I was silly enough to think that sitting in a chair would always be enough.

Let’s pause for a moment and consider the stories or rather the people who we find inspiring. In fact, let’s oversimplify it for fun, shall we?

Fill-in-the-Blanks:

I find [Enter Inspirational person here] truly inspiring because despite his/her shortcomings he/she was able to [enter the amazing accomplishment here] .

When you boil it all down to one fill-in-the-blank question or statement, what inspires us doesn’t seem to be all that much. Maybe that’s the problem. When we simplify the feats, or (if you’d like to go the more blameful route) when schools teach us as children about amazing people like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, or Fill-in-the-blank here, we . . . well . . . fill their achievements in the blanks in order to prove we’ve remembered them and to feign understanding.

Have our lives become just that? One big blank where, here and there, we fill in some kind of achievement?

Well, that certainly doesn’t seem very inspirational. No, it’s everything else that is inspirational. Not the personal achievements, but personal failures; not the financial gain, but the financial struggle. So why, with this in mind, do we expect inspiration to come freely when it has always cost someone something by the time it has been handed down?

I understand how some people cannot afford to spend 12 bucks on a book. Trust me, we at Relief know about financial hardship. But money aside, how can we afford to ignore the sacrifices of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ?

We need to recalibrate not only what, but how much we are willing to give in order to be inspired. This week, I challenge you to give something back to the people who inspire you whether it be time, money, or just kind words.

Everyone can afford to say thank you.

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