Urgency

"Urgent". You know the word. It means something like "requiring immediate attention." It may mean "insistent". Same basic idea. Its roots are easy to figure out. The word is rooted in "urge". And urge is "a strong impulse". Thus, "urgent" itself is based on urges both linguistically and practically.

I was told a long time ago "Our greatest danger is allowing the urgent to crowd out the important." Eisenhower is quoted as saying, "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important." There is, clearly, a distinction between that which is important and that which is "requiring immediate attention." We can all see that easily by observing a man who neglects his wife and children (important) because he has pressing business matters to attend to (urgent).

We tend to operate on the urgent rather than the important. Worse, we have become to magnify the urgent over the important. How? Well, in our society today it is much better to "go with your heart" than with your head. It is much better to "do what makes you happy" rather than what is right. No, indeed, we have largely redefined "what is right" to mean "whatever makes me happy". We have become a people defined by our urges.

To be fair, the Bible says this is true of us.

Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death (James 1:13-15).

You see, the sin we do is a product of our own urges. And that's not a good thing.

Now, here's the question. Do you control your own urges? I would suggest that we all have the ability to control what we do about our urges, but do we control the urges themselves? I would even argue that we can feed urges, so that they become stronger and, in that sense, we control them as well. But I do not believe that we figure out, design, and construct our own urges. I think ... urges happen. Smokers develop urges to smoke by feeding the urge, but they begin to develop those urges due to urges they did not develop. Gamblers feel the urge to gamble more and more as they gamble more and more, but they first started gambling because of urges they did not develop. Urges, you see, primarily start out as things that happen to us, not by us. Low blood sugar can trigger urges to eat. Boredom can trigger a demand for entertainment. Loneliness can trigger a desire for companionship. For men high testosterone can trigger sexual or aggressive urges. They aren't rational or planned or constructed. They're just conditions that produce urges.

You see, most of life is built on the urgent, the impulses that drive us. We can affect them and we can work on them and we can alter them, but we don't, at the outset, cause them, at least not directly. We are, for lack of a better term, "born this way". So the question becomes "Are you going to live in the urgent or in the important?" The two are not the same. Often they are in contention. And while we don't choose our urges, we always choose what to do about them. Are you going to be defined by what is urgent or by what is important, by your drives and desires or by the choices you make in light of what is truly valuable? The false suggestion that "I can't help it; I was born that way" is a lie. It may work for animals. We are made in the image of God. We don't have to do that. We can choose. "Choose this day whom you will serve" (Josh 24:15).