Shoulds & Coulds

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With help from sociologist Byung-Chul Han and the Bible’s letter to the Romans, Vince unpacks some of the defining challenges of life in the 21st century, and what to do (and not do) about them. (Image: book cover for “The Burnout Society” by Byung-Chul Han)

SPEAKER NOTES

Shoulds & Coulds

Intro

• Who’s familiar with the excellent turn of phrase “Don’t should all over yourself!” — many of us, I’m sure yeah?
  • We bring it up here a lot.
• It’s great right? Most recently, it came up for me in therapy.
  • I had committed my wife and me to playing a song for my 90 year old aunt’s birthday, upon her request. She’s so sweet.
  • But — I did not expect this — the song she asked for was incredibly difficult.
  • And it was a loaded week for me, with work for the church here and with things for the kids at home, and I’m talking about how I feel stressed about all I have to do.
  • And my therapist drops the line: you are shoulding all over yourself, Vince. You do not have to conform to this picture of the perfect hyper responsible and reliable family member. You can be free of that. You can say to your aunt: I’m sorry, we’re not able to learn that song, please pick one of these others we already know. We love you and would be so happy to play one of those.
  • My therapist made me promise I would do this so I wouldn’t should all over myself, and stress myself worse learning the song.
  • And I did, and my aunt totally understood, and it all went great.
• This month at BLC, one of the things I want to talk about is not shoulding on ourselves.
  • Because we all sometimes need that reminder.
• You know, though, actually, our culture is really good at talking about this.
  • The evidence is how many of us know the phrase “don’t should on yourself”, right?
  • Sometimes when I observe a reminder about breaking free from shoulds in popular culture, it’s brought up in a way that has the tone of “no one is talking about this, except me, person on Instagram — I alone have the courage to talk about this!”
  • But that’s not actually right. Lots of people are talking about this, all the time, I think. We still need reminders, sure. And we’ve made a lot of progress as a culture. I think it’s a pretty clear cultural value in 21st century America to want to break free from shoulding on ourselves.
  • This is important to see. And not just so we don’t appear too self-righteous on social media. There are bigger consequences, I think, to us not reading our culture well — to not seeing the progress we’ve made battling shoulds.
• To show us those bigger consequences, I tried to keep a list of cultural “don’t should on yourself!” messages I personally encountered this last week…
  • (These came in the form of everything from advertisements to Instagram influencers to interviews with famous athletes on podcasts to the children’s books I read to my kids for story time.)
• Come along with me, through Vince’s week with popular culture…
  • VINCE! Don’t should all over yourself at work,
    • you could be vacationing excitingly
    • OR you could be taking care of yourself more creatively
  • BUT ALSO don’t should all over yourself with your calendar,
    • you could be learning more important things that change the world,
    • OR you could be relaxing with more interesting hobbies that change you,
    • OR you could be meeting more exciting people and building more fulfilling relationships with different people;
  • BUT ALSO don’t should all over yourself just following the crowd,
    • you could be making your unique mark on the world expressing yourself in more singular, authentic ways,
    • OR you could be working smarter not harder like everyone else, you could be more optimized, with a larger reach, with a higher return on investment —
• And somehow, strangely, then I was back to being encouraged not to should on myself at work — like a cycle that starts again.
  • I’m in a loop of supposedly encouraging myself to be free of shoulds,
  • BUT paradoxically this loop of messaging doesn’t leave me feeling free at all. I feel more buried in guilt that I'm not living up to my potential, more trapped in resentment toward others seemingly in my way or doing better than me, more burnt out, more depressed.
• Why?!
  • Can y’all spot it? Have I laid enough bread crumbs for us?
  • All of these messages might be right on about shoulds, AND there’s another word that takes over, as a sort of unintended consequence. What is it?
  • Could!
    • You could be doing this and could be doing that. You could be this kind of person and could be that kind of person.
  • This is a different kind of torment. Not the torment of shoulds; but the torment of coulds.
• The torment of coulds is not as popularly understood, but I think it is one of THE defining features of 21st century life,
  • so I also, maybe most of all, want to talk about not coulding on ourselves this month at BLC.
  • Our September theme is: Shoulds and Coulds.

Unpacking our culture

The Korean-German sociologist Byung Chul Han explains what we’ve just observed this way…

The dominant culture we’re living in today is what’s called the “achievement society”, whereas the previous dominant culture that’s still around but has gradually faded is what’s called the “disciplinary society”.

• The shift roughly begins with the 1960s cultural revolution,
• And somewhere in the 1980s or 90s is where the tide turns to the point that the “disciplinary society” is no longer dominant and now the “achievement society” is the stronger social force.

The “disciplinary society” is a “must do” culture, where people are whipped into shape by an external disciplinarian (the church, the state, the institution, the company, the family).

The “achievement society” is a “can do” culture, where people whip themselves into shape, because we are free individuals, who do our own research, who are internally driven, by the promise of achievement… or, the flipside, by the fear of falling behind.

We want to resist the urge to moralize either as entirely better or worse than the other. All cultures are a mixed-bag.

Are we seeing how shoulds and coulds fit into this description of late modern life?

• Shoulds are the torment of the disciplinary society.
• Coulds are the torment of the achievement society.

This is a visual representation of how...

• We as a culture have made a lot of progress battling the torment of the shoulds — that social force is absolutely still present, but its fading — we're doing well, y'all!
• AND YET we as a culture are very much still learning when it comes to battling the torment of the coulds — that social force is as strong as ever.

Reflection Questions

Before I turn us to the Scriptures for some wisdom from the Jesus tradition that I think can help us, there are two big takeaways I want to underscore in all this unpacking of our culture — which I want to use to invite us into some personal reflection with God.

(1) Again, both social forces (should and could) are present in all of our lives.

This is where you need to do some personal reflection on your own identity and how it relates to these social forces.

For example, if you grew up affected by high control religion, purity culture, or fundamentalism, there is surely plenty of “should” torment in your experience, in addition to the “could" torment we all experience inside the dominant framing of the “achievement society”.

Or, for those of us whom some of the pieces of our identity are marginalized (if you’re a woman, or a person of color, or queer, or your body is differently abled), you likely don’t experience the same amount of freedom as, for instance, me, so your reality is more “disciplinary society” than mine is, and therefore more tormented by “shoulds”.

So, consider the pieces that make up your identity. How much “should” do you experience? How much “could” do you experience?

For me, I’m going to be mostly tormented by could, with some dollops of should torment, due to my rule-following and repressive personality, some brushes with more fundamentalist religion as a young adult, and my childhood marked more by deference than traditional patriarchal male traits.

Let’s take 30 seconds, and let me pray: God, guide us in our minds or bodily sensations as we personally reflect — what do you want us to notice right now as we consider our unique makeup of shoulds and coulds?

(30 SECONDS)

Okay, second takeaway I want to underscore for the sake of personal reflection…

(2) Again, these social forces are not unrelated or separate from one another.

One is emerging partially from the ashes of the other, which leads to unintended consequences, like we saw earlier with “don’t should on yourself” messages presumably helping me with “should” torment in my life but in the process contributing to more “could” torment in my life.

Because we have more history battling “shoulds”, one of the struggles for everyday people like us in this cultural reality is that:

• It is easy to default to diagnosing every problem as a “should” problem that we need to be freed from:
• More freedom, less restriction, throw off the shackles is our knee-jerk prescription to every ailment we experience.

As a result, our “could” problems of burnout and depression and resentment don’t just hide un-diagnosed, they are inflamed! Because “more freedom, less restriction, throw off the shackles” makes “could” problems more overwhelming! That works with “shoulds”, but not with “coulds”!

There’s more things I’m not living up to? There’s more options I have to consider? There's more responsibilities that fall on my shoulder? Ahh!!

Actually, unfortunately, this is not always unintended consequence. Sometimes this is very much intended consequence by cynical and bad faith people in power.

Good, attractive messages like “don’t should on yourself” are co-opted all the time in corporate and political spheres, because it has been discovered that “coulds” are far more efficient than “shoulds” at maximizing profit and reach.

This is precisely how internet algorithms work — knowingly taking advantage of our most base individual and group psychological drives — tormenting the worst versions of ourselves with endless “coulds” clothed as freedom from “shoulds”.

With careful messaging that leaves us feeling like we’re sticking it to those rotten external disciplinarians holding us back — whoever they are for us: religious, political, familial, doesn’t matter — the cunning and cynical can position themselves as “on our side”, and so long as we feel that dopamine hit of freedom, we will, in our quests to be our highest achieving selves, exploit ourselves for them; no overt subjugation required.

Byung Chul Han, our sociologist guide this month, can sometimes be a little spicy with his words, and calls all this the “violence of positivity”, wanting us to see that, in the achievement society, liberation is about wise constraint, not boundless freedom.

• We don’t need to free our selves from shackles; we need to be held by something bigger than us!
• We don’t need more access or options, we need something reliable and familiar to come back to!
• We don’t need to address ourselves with more affirmations about what we could do if we put our mind to it, we need to get beyond ourselves and find where we end and others begin, so we can experience relationship — with others, with God — something we can't give to ourselves.

So, my second reflection question is: Considering what you identified before as your unique makeup of shoulds and coulds — Is there anything you diagnosed as a “should” problem that might actually be a “could” problem?

Again, let’s take 30 seconds. God, guide us in this little experiment in humility. Speak to us in our minds or in a bodily sensation as we reflect.

(30 SECONDS)

Scripture

Back in the 1970s, just as the “achievement society” is really starting to assert itself as ready to take over dominance from the “disciplinary society”, one of the most important theologians of the second half of the 20th century, Jürgen Moltmann, brilliantly spoke into the challenges of shoulds and coulds by re-interpreting a famous scripture from the Bible.

Today in 2025, now fully immersed in the “achievement society”, Moltmann’s re-interpretation feels even more relevant.

The Scripture was Romans 3:28, from one of the letters of the Apostle Paul.

28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

If you’ve spent time in churches in America, I’m sure you’ve heard sermons on this where words like justification, grace, righteousness, sin, faith vs works, etc. were thrown around as though they had the plainest definitions in the world that have stood for all time.

Do your best to put those on the shelf. What this passage is believed to have originally meant and how it has been read and interpreted has changed several times throughout history. I’ll show you how, and that will help us see how Moltmann re-interpreted it for our “achievement society” in a brilliant way.

(It’s funny, if you’ve been with us at BLC, we spent August following the Lectionary in which our messages were very reading dense with four long passages every Sunday… for September, we’re taking the opposite approach, we’re sort of going to spend the whole month on this one single passage from Romans 3.)

So, putting on the shelf sermons from our childhoods, here’s the definition I recommend today for “justification”:

• Okayness.
• Do you know what I mean by okayness?
• A security, a settledness, an equanimity.
• Justified means not needing to prove oneself. Not striving, not climbing, not hiding, not defending. Okayness.

If we jump all the way back in time to when Paul first wrote these words, 2000 years ago, he was writing to address the empty promise of tribalism to offer okayness.

• Specifically, that someone is okay (justified) because they are a person of the Jewish Law.
• In the context of Paul's larger point in Romans, the faith he was referring to was not an individual believer's faith, as it is often assumed today. Paul was not contrasting grace-based Christians with legalistic Jews. Contrary to popular belief today (what I used to believe), most recent scholarship explains Ancient Judaism was not legalistic. It had lots of grace. But it was, like the whole ancient world, tribalistic.
• The faith Paul is referring to, that justifies, is God's own faith (faithfulness is a better translation) as evidenced by so many people in his day experiencing Christ’s Spirit, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
• So, actually, Paul says, the people of God are all those that the faithful God chooses to visit by Christ’s Spirit bringing that experience of okayness, not just those given the Jewish Law — okayness (justification) is a matter outside the Law's scope. Ideally, works of the Jewish Law are meant to point to that, but the Jewish Law doesn’t have exclusive access.

1500 years later, during the Reformation, Romans 3:28 would be re-interpreted to address that era’s empty promiser of okayness — the institutionalism of the corrupt Catholic Church of the day.

• The Reformers (like Luther) moved beyond Paul’s original point about tribalism, but that’s part of the beauty of the way a sacred text is meant to work! We re-interpret it for new times with new struggles.
• Okayness (justification), the Reformation said, is a matter outside the scope of an institutional church’s declaration over you; okayness is a matter of one’s personal, individual faith… Ideally, works of the church point to that, but the church doesn’t own it over you!

But then we come to our modern world, in which individualism has been absorbed by a produce-and-consume capitalism the Reformers never could have foreseen, and Jürgen Moltmann finds the need to re-interpret Romans 3:28 again to address today’s empty promise — of the self to offer itself okayness.

• Moltmann writes…

  “When we apply this Reformation concept of [humanity’s] justification by faith to the modern achievement-centered society, it implies that [humanity] is being liberated not only from outside determination and exploitation but in a much deeper sense also from the compulsive notion that [we are] what [we] produce.

(In other words, liberated not just from shoulds, but from coulds)

So [we are] set free from bad conditions of production not merely to find [ourselves] in better ones. [We] need no longer be ashamed of [ourselves] and consequently [we do] not have to prove [ourselves] to [ourselves] anymore. [We] find [our] humanity in the awareness that [we have] already been accepted and loved as [we are].” (Theology of Play, 1972) Slides and DSK off

- You need not be ashamed of yourself.
- You do not have to prove yourself to yourself.
- You are not what you produce
    - Or I would add, now in the era of social media, you are not the metrics of how much online recognition you get or wish to get
- Your humanity is found in the awareness that you are already accepted and loved as you are.
- By the faithful God Jesus shows us.

• Okayness, Moltmann says, is a matter outside the scope of individual productivity (or performance or authenticity). Might one’s works of productivity or performance or authenticity point to an okayness beyond those things? Sure! But as the fruit of a deeper okayness, not as what makes one okay.

Closing

• This deeper okayness is a gift, a grace, not an achievement.
  • No personal freedom, no personal access, no personal affirmation will ever help us feel this, because it cannot be personally engineered, or manufactured, or earned with excellence, or won in competition, or paid for with lots of money.
  • It can only be found beyond ourselves, in relationship, in community… and, if I may suggest, especially in faith community, because then we’re not just talking about relationship with others, we’re also talking about relationship with the ultimate other, with God — we’re talking about something sacred, transcendent.
  • Faith community calls us beyond ourselves, yet never at the expense of ourselves. It’s a dance of call and response. It transcends us AND includes us.
  • We refer often to the image of “Resonance” to describe this — ringing at the same frequency of someone or something else in a way that transforms us but that we can’t control (this definition is from another sociologist I often reference, Hartmut Rosa).
• Sometimes when I sing with you all here on a Sunday and then pray our prayer of confession, aloud, hearing everyone else’s voices too, and then we share in the ritual of communion…
  • It's an experience of resonance for me.
  • Not always, at times the conditions don’t seem to align.
  • But sometimes, I am seized by the experience… called beyond myself, and I respond, I participate.
  • And I can really feel myself resonate at a frequency ringing around me.
  • And that frequency is acceptance, apart from my successes or failures at proving myself to myself.
  • I feel a deep okayness. A gift from the God of Love.
• Where else in modern life does this happen?
  • I don’t know that there is another context than faith communities. I know that’s self promoting because I’m a pastor, but honestly.
  • Modern life is full of amazing resources to help us shake free from “shoulds” — therapy, access to representation of diverse identities, space to explore who we most authentically are — we’ll talk more about all this next week…
  • And yet when it comes to “coulds”, when it comes to our need not to free our selves, but to be held, to be hemmed in, to find okayness at the end of our selves — the “more resources” game just can’t help. This is why we need faith community in our life, like church.

Let me pray for us…

Prayer