Why do 25,000 normal-looking people run to the point of exhaustion?

It's 6:15 am, the air is crisp, the glow of a sunrise is stretching across the sky, and a crowd is gathering. They are pacing, stretching, or munching -- no doubt the odd remnants of a well-planned nutrition regimen.  They are dressed in all sorts of ridiculous outfits that you normally would not wear in public.  Many are chatting excitedly like elementary kids before a pageant. But they are not kids, these are adults, 25,000 of them to be exact, who have paid good money to run their guts out for 13.1 miles.  I am among them, and I can't help but think, "Why do we do this?"

I have heard it said, "Americans nowadays are lazy." Its hard to "get people to do things." As a non-profit leader, I am always trying to get people to do things, donate money, work hard, attend workshops, enroll in training, etc. etc., and it is not easy.  We add all sorts of incentives, work the networks, craft our pitch, and maybe we get 100 or so if we are lucky. Churches are the same way.  We have full time staff dedicated to recruitment and they struggle to fill 50 seats on a Sunday morning.

But here I am, with 25,000 New Yorkers, who are volunteering their time, making great physical sacrifice, committing to months of training, getting up early, giving every muscle in their bodies in search of a little medal that has almost no monetary value.  How can we make sense of it? Are Americans really lazy, or are they hungry for something we are not giving?

Since I am one of these 25,000, I asked myself that question. Why am I participating in this arbitrary and odd social phenomena?  What am I hungry for?

1. Difficulty. It is seen as a hard thing.  One sign I read among the cheering crowd said this, "If it were easy, we would be doing it."  Doing something hard makes us feel good.  To put everything you have on the line is a sort of spiritual experience that I can't quite explain, but I know it is real.  We are hungry for something that requires a lot of us. 

2. Community. There is a close community of support.  When you talk to another runner, there is instantly a bond and plenty to talk about.  The vibe is always positive.  Rarely if ever have I encountered another runner who made me feel like my target time was pathetically slow.  You might compare target paces but it is not really a competition with others it is a competition with yourself, and there is nothing but positivity toward each other as runners.

3. Care for the body.  We are obsessed with health and fitness.  This certainly is part of the equation, but there are quite a few easier ways to achieve our fitness goals.  So, I make this a minor point.  Still there is something meaningful about listening to your body and caring for it.  Something inside tells us we were made for  care and dominion over physical obstacles. 

4. Clarity. My generation has been hurt by post-modernism and self-esteem trophies.  We have been pummeled with the message, "Just be yourself, just be happy," and that is something hard to achieve when everything around seems underwhelming.  A race, however, is primal and clear.  It is 13.1 miles not 13.  There is a precise start line, ending line and route. We can see exactly how fast we ran, and we know exactly if it was faster or slower than last time.  The clarity of a race is psychologically soothing in its own way.

5. Inclusion. My generation has been hurt by modernism also.  In spite of the move toward inclusion and acceptance, the world still pretty much operates on a survival of the fittest mentality in the tradition of modernism. Regardless of the sector, there are constant rankings and comparison.  There is a top 10 list in almost anything you can imagine. On this race, there may be competition toward the front of the pack, but for the most part the focus is on supporting each other.  The goal is to finish well, not necessarily to beat the next guy.

6. Assurance. Finishing is a given.  Even though I always desperately want to quite.  I have never quit mid-race. I have slowed to a walk, but the idea of actually not making it never really seems like an option.  I have a bib number.  I have sponsors. I have the shirt. One way or another I am sure that I will cross the line.  There is no real doubt.

7. Reward. It may only be a piece of plastic with a ribbon, a bag of refueling treats, a little after-party and a selfie, but finishing a race is like no other feeling in the world. What felt like it would never end is suddenly over. The eternity of steps between me and the finish line all of a sudden blurs into one little experience.

So there you have it. A few simple concepts, but they go deep, and when you experience them like I have over and over again in my body, well, you just sign up again.  If I can sum it up, its like the race offers a story to be in.  It reminds me that I was not made for the sidelines. I was made to be included in the company of the finishers.

The race feels like a microcosm of life, a little model of what life was meant to be.  Difficulty, Community, Care for the Body, Clarity, Inclusion, Assurance, Reward, maybe this is what we were meant for.  What would happen if our real lives had more of these things?  What would happen if our Faith included more of this?  I am not sure, but we just might wake up at 5 am, just so we don't miss something.

What kind of good deeds are good?

In the Book of Matthew in the Bible, Jesus tells a bizarre story of judgment day at the end of time.

Folks are divided into two groups, the sheep and goats.  The "sheep" are said to have fed, clothed, visited Jesus himself and the "goats" are said to have ignored him. I have always thought of this story as a firm warning to be sure that you feed, clothe, and visit people or you might get the axe on judgment day.  That is certainly the most obvious point, but the other day I noticed how strikingly confused both groups were  The goats are incredulous.  "When did we not do all those things to you?"  The sheep are similarly confused. "When did we do all those good things to you?"

There is an irony in goodness.  It is not well-suited to measurement and verification.  Even those doing good are confused about the relative value of what they are doing.

Like so many of Jesus teachings, He seems to be trying to confuse the score keepers.  We want to measure our good deeds against our bad and make sure we are on the positive side of average at least. We are very invested in keeping score even it is sub-consciously.  Have we made it?  Are we winning or loosing?  Jesus throws this line of thinking on its head.  Most people who are good don't even know where they have been good.  It appears to happen almost by accident.

Similarly, I have often found that my most loving deeds are mostly done for wrong reasons.  I want to be noticed, recognized or at least thanked.  If nothing else, I want the satisfaction of feeling I had made a difference.  As the saying goes, I want something to "justify my existence." It seems the true sheep barely noticed when they had done something good or at least did not see the great significance in it.  Perhaps that's because it wasn't about being noticed in the first place.  It was just more of a spontaneous action springing from feeling accepted.  The goats on the other hand were disappointed to discover that the "castles built on sand" were all washed away.

This is not an isolated teaching.  Other Scriptures talk about the importance of your good deeds being done in secret (Luke 17:10, Matthew 6:3).  Its as if Jesus knew that self-satisfaction would drive many good deeds.

What is the way out of this dilemma?   Picture yourself in a moment when you were most in love.  What did you act like during those times?  You probably opened the door for random strangers.  Maybe you tipped better or stopped to pet a dog during your commute.  When a person is overwhelmed with love, the goodness just sort of randomly flows out in all directions -- not in a clear transactional or strategic way.  Certainly, you don't keep score. Thomas Merton just said it so well, "The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith to believe that one is loved."

Forgive me if I sound harsh, but doing good for any other reason is an elaborate psychological mechanism to use the less fortunate to feel better about myself. I am sorry to say I know what I am talking about on this.  I am an expert at it actually, but this is not the way of the sheep.