Everything At Once

“All I want to be is everything at once.”

Lenka, ‘Everything at Once’, Two (2011)

The relevance of the chameleon will be clear by the end of the first paragraph, I promise. Apparently this one’s from Malta.

Remember the Very Hungry Caterpillar?¹ The eventful life story of this gluttonous insect, written and illustrated by Eric Carle,² played, as I recall, a fairly prominent role in my five-year-old self’s formal education, though I have to say I was always perplexed as to why, if the caterpillar in question was indeed so very hungry, he didn’t just eat a few pieces of fruit in their entirety, instead of wastefully munching mere holes through a whole cornucopia’s worth. In fact, although The Very Hungry Caterpillar is indisputably Carle’s most famous work, I can’t say I could ever see why it particularly deserved to be; my personal favourite was always one called The Mixed-Up Chameleon.³

In this story, our reptilian hero, used to a simple life of changing colour and catching flies, takes a trip to the zoo, where he encounters and marvels at a whole variety of animals very different from himself. Observing particular abilities possessed by these other animals and wishing he too had these abilities, he finds that, by some mysterious magic, it’s not only his colour that he’s able to change; every wish is immediately granted. As a result, he ends up as a bizarre patchwork of creatures, sporting such disparate features as antlers, flamingo wings, a tortoise’s shell, and a giraffe’s neck, and totally unable to change colour or catch flies at all. And predictably, he realises that life as a typical chameleon wasn’t so bad after all, wishes to regain his original form, and, having regained it, goes contentedly home.

Be yourself, cries the not-so-subtle subtext; no good will come of wishing you were more like someone else. It’s a moral so obvious that I suspect we barely think about it beyond a vague approval to the effect that it’s a good lesson for the kids to learn. But I think it’s worth pausing over exactly what it was that our friend the mixed-up chameleon learned, because I for one am still discouragingly prone to making the very mistakes he did.

The chameleon’s ultimate problem was nothing more than straightforward covetousness – that is to say, desiring something belonging to somebody else. I’d anticipate that those of us who take the Bible as the authoritative word of God would all quite happily agree that coveting is a Bad Thing:

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour’s.

That’s the last of the Ten Commandments God gave his people Israel after rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, as recorded in Exodus 20.⁴ Now, funnily enough, I doubt that any of us finds her- or himself seriously wrestling with the sin of coveting someone else’s ox or donkey on a regular basis, but the real crunch point of the commandment is those few words at the end. As some of the other examples might suggest, we’re clearly not talking solely about external property – about stuff.

You shall not covet … anything that is your neighbour’s.

In the case of our friend the chameleon, it was the zoo animals’ abilities – attributes, talents – that he desired. He saw a polar bear and wished he were big, a fish and wished he could swim, a seal and wished he were funny. Coveting is a see-it-want-it sort of a process; one is made aware of the fact that somebody else has something, and resents the fact that it’s that other person who has it, rather than oneself.

 

Although if the chameleon had known about the threat of climate change, maybe he wouldn’t have been so keen to be more like a polar bear after all.

Moreover, it’s worth stressing that the chameleon wanted to be all these things simultaneously. No one improvement was enough to satisfy him; he wanted the ability to do anything and everything he saw another creature doing. Lenka expressed a similar sentiment in a song with which you may be familiar from its use in the 2012 television adverts for the then-new Windows 8:

As warm as the sun, as silly as fun,

As cool as a tree, as scary as the sea,

As hot as fire, cold as ice,

Sweet as sugar and everything nice,

As old as time, as straight as a line,

As royal as a queen, as buzzed as a bee,

As stealth as a tiger, smooth as a glider,

Pure as a melody, pure as I want to be –

All I want to be is everything at once.⁵

It’s a pleasant enough song to listen to, though it does rather give off the impression of having been written by a small child who has just learned what a simile is and is very excited about the fact. I don’t want to disregard Lenka’s lyrics too hastily, though: how often, after all, do I feel exactly the same way?

That I’m already graciously blessed with a good range of abilities and opportunities to hone them simply isn’t enough. I chat to a friend who’s particularly good at sewing, and wish I could do that; I hear someone effortlessly harmonise as we sing in church, and wish I could do that; I enjoy some kind of delicious food item that someone else has creatively prepared, and wish I could do that. Even if the skill in question is one in which I do already have some measure of proficiency, every superior demonstration of it at someone else’s hand is an occasion for my covetousness to rear its ugly head. It’s not that I want to exchange my current abilities for an alternative set, but that I want to supplement and augment them in almost every conceivable direction. Exactly like Lenka and the poor mixed-up chameleon, I want to be everything at once.

So what am I saying? That it’s an infringement of the tenth commandment ever to want to learn a new skill? That we sin every time we ever aspire to anything? Unsurprisingly, no. Covetousness isn’t wrong because it involves the desiring of something; there are all sorts of things it’s very right to desire, like the vindication of a just cause, or the love of one’s spouse, or the coming of the kingdom of God. Rather, covetousness is wrong because it involves the selfish desiring of something despite the fact that said something belongs to somebody else. You shall not covet … anything that is your neighbour’s. The implication, inescapably, is, “I would rather I had that good thing than you did.”

And that kind of attitude reveals not only a brazen flouting of the tenth commandment, but also – particularly when applied to abilities – a fundamental failure to live in accordance with 1 Corinthians 12:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body … God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”⁶

 

An example of an activity requiring input from both the eye and the hand.

The “I have no need of you” there can be doubly construed; on the one hand, it could easily mean, “I have no need of you because I don’t think that what you do is at all important;” or on the other, it could just as easily mean, “I have no need of you because I think what you do is very important, and as a result, I’d much rather do it myself, thanks very much.” Either way, it’s clearly not acceptable as far as God’s concerned. If the only reason I’m not coveting someone else’s abilities is because I’m disdaining them as unimpressive, that doesn’t testify to my selflessness but to my arrogance – which is really just selfishness in another guise. And if I am coveting, then I’m not submitting to God’s design for how the body of Christ – the community of believers, the Church with a capital C – is supposed to work. The section of 1 Corinthians I quoted above is sandwiched within its chapter between two other sections of very similar structure:

For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

And a little later:

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?

The questions are clearly rhetorical, because they were already answered in the negative in the first layer of the sandwich. God doesn’t give anyone a full set off all the abilities going; he apportions to each one individually as he wills. There are always going to be loads of things that I’m rubbish at and other people are really good at, and that’s very deliberate on God’s part. That’s how the body of Christ is supposed to look. And, like everything God ordains, that’s ultimately a very good thing.

Diversity of abilities within the Church means we can’t all be splendidly self-sufficient islands; it forces us to depend on one another. We have to generously help one another where we have the capacity to do so – bear one another’s burdens – and bow graciously out where someone can do a better job than we can – submit to one another.⁷ It’s that kind of interdependence that creates a home for real love and unity, which, I think it worth mentioning, was the subject of Jesus’ last prayer before he entered Gethsemane, so evidently something of a priority for him.⁸ Coveting others’ abilities, by contrast, represents, at its heart, a movement towards robbing them of their God-given role, and practically kicking them out of the body altogether. “I have no need of you.”

So what can I do the next time I find myself pulling a mixed-up chameleon and wishing I could add an ability I see someone else displaying to my own repertoire? The answer isn’t to try to persuade myself that that ability isn’t actually that great and so I don’t really want it after all. Rather, I can take the fact that I do (rightly) value the ability in question and redirect it towards praising God for the way he has designed the community of his people to work. I can thank God that he has given that person that gift, partly for the person’s own blessing and enjoyment (which, if I’m truly being loving towards this person, should be a cause close to my heart), but also (more significantly) so that he or she might use it for the benefit of the rest of the body – which includes me, of course. And I can also thank God that he has given me my own set of abilities, partly for my own blessing and enjoyment, but also (more significantly) so that I might use them for the benefit of the rest of the body. Indeed, the benefit of one’s fellow-believers is, unlike covetousness, a perfectly valid motivation for learning a new skill, though one should still bear in mind that it’s not any individual’s job to be the whole of (or indeed a disproportionately huge chunk of) the body.

As the mixed-up chameleon found out, trying to be everything at once is more burdensome than it is freeing, and hinders one from properly doing what one is actually already good at – be that catching flies or writing blog posts. God designed the community of believers so that none of us would be encumbered with an obligation to be everything at once, but so that we would all be able to benefit from the fruit of one another’s unique abilities, in which light there’s no need for covetousness. So instead of wishing we were everything at once, let’s strive to be what we are in the most God-honouring way possible, and make space for others to do the same.

Footnotes

¹ If not, this audiovisual rendering of the classic children’s book is as good a reminder as any: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4HI7q38VmQ.

² A talented and prolific guy – here’s his official website: http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html.

³ If I recall rightly, this video version is the very same one that sparked my fondness for the story as a child: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEqoJMNU2eo.

⁴ Have a look at the whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus+20&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Here’s the music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE9tV1WGTgE.

⁶ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+12&version=ESVUK. Give the whole thing a read and keep it open – we’ll be coming back to other bits of it in a second.

⁷ The italicised expressions are taken from Galatians 2, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+6&version=ESVUK, and Ephesians 5, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5&version=ESVUK, respectively. I’ll let you track down the individual verse references for yourself.

⁸ As recorded in John 17: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+17&version=ESVUK.