Beyond Passion
Contributing through Christ-Centered Mentoring
"Follow your passion." "Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life." "The only way to do great work is to love what you do." These mantras are deeply embedded in modern career and life advice. They promise fulfillment through self-discovery and aligning your work with your personal passions. But therein lies a problem: this approach often begins with navel-gazing and ends with intuition as the sole compass for decision-making. While passion may energize us, like food, it is not nourishment for the soul. Meaning is found not in introspection alone but in pursuing what is meaningful. And that meaning is deeply tied to contribution.
Take, for example, the organization 80,000 Hours, which specializes in career advice aimed at maximizing societal impact. The name "80,000 Hours" refers to the approximate number of hours an individual spends working over a lifetime and highlights their mission of helping people find meaning in their career. 80,000 Hours directly challenges the passion-driven narrative, calling it a mislead. They instead advocate for a simple but profound principle: "Get good at something that helps others." In short: do what contributes. This statement reframes the discussion of purpose, anchoring it in service and impact rather than self-gratification.
What Makes a Life Meaningful?
In their book Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus outline five pillars of a meaningful life: health, relationships, passion, growth, and contribution. These categories resonate because they encompass the dimensions of well-being and human flourishing. Yet, contribution stands out as the linchpin that ties the others together.
Imagine being in perfect health, surrounded by loving relationships, deeply engrossed in your passions, and steadily improving in every area of life. It seems ideal. But at the end of your life, could you honestly answer the question, what was it all for? Without contribution, the answer risks being self-centered and hollow.
Consider each of these pillars:
Health: Personal physical and mental well-being is foundational, but its benefits are often individual. While improving your health may inspire others, its direct impact on the world is limited unless channeled into serving others.
Relationships: Building meaningful relationships requires effort and often involves sacrifice. The investment you make in others—whether through time, forgiveness, or acts of love—is a form of contribution that enriches both parties.
Passion: Pursuing what you love can bring joy and energy, but passion alone doesn’t guarantee impact. Your passion might involve pursuing a very individual hobby, like learning to play an instrument, shopping, or solving jigsaw puzzles. But when passion aligns with serving others, it transforms from a personal pursuit to a meaningful mission.
Growth: Personal growth is vital, but it becomes truly meaningful when it equips you to give more effectively. Learning, improving, and acquiring skills gain purpose when they serve a greater good.
Contribution: This is the pillar that justifies the others. It’s the act of giving your time, energy, skills, or resources to benefit others that makes life’s efforts significant. Without contribution, the rest risk festering into vanity.
The Allure of Self-Focus
Much of modern culture amplifies self-focused messages like "live your truth" and "you do you." Personalized ads, social media algorithms, and cultural narratives often reinforce the idea that fulfillment is found in achieving perfect health, ideal relationships, and unending personal growth. But suppose you attain all these goals. What then? Could you answer that fundamental question, what was it all for, without saying, it was all for me? Even King Solomon, with unparalleled wealth, wisdom, and success, reflected that it was all "vanity and a striving after wind" when pursued for its own sake (Ecclesiastes 1:14, etc.).
Reframe
Here’s the rub: you already possess everything you need to contribute meaningfully. This isn’t to say your health, relationships, passions, and growth are perfect, but rather that you have enough to begin. As the Stoics remind us, the inevitability of death should inspire urgency. Marcus Aurelius wrote, "Do not fear death, but accept it as one of the processes of nature. As soon as you are born, you begin to die, and so the inevitable is already happening."
For us Christians, this urgency is coupled with hope. In Christ, we don’t fear death because He overcame it. His resurrection secures eternal life, where we will experience:
Perfect health: "The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory" (1 Corinthians 15:42-43).
Perfect relationships: "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Perfect passion: "They shall not labor in vain" (Isaiah 65:23).
Perfect growth: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image" (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Perfect contribution: "No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him" (Revelation 22:3).
If these are the promises of eternity, and you trust God to keep these promises through Jesus, then these are already yours. If you trust the inevitability of death, which has not yet arrived, trust too the inevitability of a new heaven and new earth, won for you by the ultimate sacrifice and contribution of Christ.
That security is stronger and longer lasting than any passion or pleasurable whim you can taste in this life.
And it's yours.
So then the question becomes, to paraphrase Gandalf: What will you do with the time that is given to you on earth?
And another question: Have you given Christ-centered mentoring a try?
Why Christ-Centered Mentoring?
Mentoring is a profound form of contribution. It involves investing in others—sharing wisdom, offering guidance, and walking alongside someone in their growth. When centered on Christ, mentoring goes beyond worldly success, pointing others toward eternal truth and purpose.
Engaging in Christ-centered mentoring is an acknowledgment that our lives are not just for ourselves. We're not made to be bent in on ourselves, but serving outwards. It’s an act of love that reflects the greatest commandments: to love God and love one another. By contributing through mentoring, you align your health, passions, growth, and relationships with the ultimate calling of serving His kingdom.
To Him be the glory.
To Finish
A meaningful life isn’t built on following fleeting passions or achieving personal perfection. It’s found in contributing to something greater than yourself. By aligning your efforts with Christ’s example of selfless love, you not only find meaning but also help others do the same. So ask yourself: what will you do today to contribute meaningfully? How will you mentor, serve, and love in a way that reflects God’s eternal purpose?
About the Author: Samuel Doebler James is a son of Matthew and Christine Doebler. He works as a data analyst, is getting his MBA, and is often thinking about tabletop games. He writes about RPGs and philosophy at dreamingdragonslayer.com. He and his wife live in Tempe, Arizona.
 | A guest post by
|
Interesting read. Good mentors are needed everywhere.