The Evils of... Air Conditioning!?
Have our blessings led to us feeling entitled?
Carolyn, 85, grabbed the remote of her electric recliner and raised the footrest slowly, slowly, slowly.
As the chair naturally tilted her back, she closed her eyes and felt the air conditioning vent blow crisp 68-degree air.
The Life Alert commercial wrapped up, and the 5:30 local news came on. She sighed a sigh of deep comfort: with her dinner already finished, the local news was the kickoff of her 3-hour-long “wind down” before bed. She had been doing the same routine for so long, she couldn’t remember a time in retirement when her night didn’t look something like what she was experiencing in that moment.
The female anchor’s voice cut in, “Good evening and thank you for joining us tonight on KDDP Channel 9 News…”
Carolyn smiled to herself as her (slightly shaky) hand lifted her ice water to her lips.
Ahhhhh…. She thought peacefully to herself as the anchors gave the agenda for what new stories were to come.
“That’s right, Anne,” a man’s voice chimed in with perfect newscaster inflection. “In about 10 minutes I’ll be pulling up the radar for folks to show how this current heat wave… is just the beginning.”
Carolyn set her cup down and looked out her lace curtains. There’s a heat wave outside?
Leading up to July 4th this year in Minnesota was HOT! I know the rest of the country thinks we don’t get that warm in the summertime, which, compared to Arizona, is a fair assumption… but we can get weather “extremes” - disgustingly cold winter days (looking at you, January!) and very hot, sticky summer days.
Many local “county fairs” were held and had lots of outdoor events leading up to the big Fourth of July celebration that Friday night. All of that sounds great and wholesome… except the “real feel” most of the week was in the mid-90s and HUMID! I love my toddler, but man, two hours at the fair was far more than enough time for me (18 weeks pregnant at the time) outside. WOOF.
So… while I don’t expect you to feel too bad for me, it’s ok to give a little pity ;)
Around that time, I walked out of my apartment complex around lunchtime and felt the humid heat hit my face like a wet oven (or a dense jungle, pick your metaphor). Either way, it was horrible.
“Yuck!” I audibly said as a confused older lady (who I did not see outside the entry doors) turned around. Oh well.
As I scurried to my car, I couldn’t help but think of the treat my car’s black leather seats had in store for my poor thighs.
This sucks! I grumbled as the sweat under my hat already started to gather. And I know, not wearing a hat would help me stay a bit cooler, but my pale skin simply won’t allow it!
It was hot, it was humid, and I had this overwhelming… Anger? Frustration? Sense? - that it wasn’t supposed to be that way.
It’s as if my body oozed out the sentiment, “Why can’t it just be a beautiful 75-degree day with a slight breeze and a few billowy clouds sprinkled across the baby blue sky… LIKE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE!?”
Lovely attitude, I know.
Like Carolyn from the fictional story above, I love my climate-controlled living space. While some people can afford AC but choose not to use it, you’ll have to pry the air conditioner gauge out of my cold, dead hands. I unashamedly love my 71-degree setting, and I will love it some more.
That said, as I trudged to my car across the hot parking lot, a thought hit me like a ton of bricks: This weather is what the REAL day is like today.
It was as if the scales fell from my whining eyes, and I saw how sheltered I truly was.
As perhaps obvious as that sounds, it truly humbled me and made me think: “What if we as a culture have forgotten what the natural state of the world is like?” And, “Has that memory lapse altered our perception of God’s goodness?”
Yes, quite the existential questions for a parking lot… but let me explain.
For hundreds (if not thousands) of years, that exact spot where I was standing in Minnesota has been hot and humid in July. The natural state of Minnesota in the summer is hot, muggy, and littered with Satan’s tiny minions (mosquitoes) after dusk.
The only reason I thought it should be anything other than that is because I have been blessed by shelter, air conditioning, lots of bug spray, and the money to afford all of those things.
What had been gifts from God were then twisted into a new standard that made me disappointed in God’s creation - how disturbing is that?! “When Blessings Lead to Entitlement” might just be a blog I’ll have to write one day, stay tuned!
Think about it: Most people complain about the weather. Around here, complaining about he weather is a sure thing that you can rely on if you’re running out of small talk ideas.
But what rational reason do I have to think that Minnesota shouldn’t act exactly how it has always acted? It isn’t the one who changed, I am.
I can’t help but wonder if my farming ancestors saw things differently. I would bet they weren’t jazzed when it got really hot, but I doubt the deep-seated feeling of “it shouldn’t be this way” crossed their mind.
Do you see the subtle difference?
It’s not that the heat was ever easy; it’s that we now, in 2025, have this weird idea that the weather should be different! And naturally, that difference is what makes us most comfortable.
It’s kind of silly when we take a step back and look at the root belief we have when we are complaining about the weather.
Could you imagine my great-great-grandpa in 1910 coming in from a long day of plowing the fields and hearing this? He might wipe sweat from his brow and say something like, “Wait, you think the entire planet should be altered from how it’s always been so YOU can constantly be surrounded by a perfect summer day?”
The more I chewed on this, the more it became abundantly clear that blessings can lead to entitlement. We must remember that entitlement is the opposite of gratitude; something we are supposed to give to God because He is worthy of our thankfulness, but also because it keeps us grounded in the reality that blessings are just that: BLESSINGS.
(See my blog on gratitude HERE).
Now let’s take that concept and push it forward to the rest of the world’s “natural state.”
I don’t want to bring the mood down too much, but that same idea applies to all the horrible things in the world.
If we look back on history, the extreme vast majority of people were not upper-class. They weren’t even middle class! They were poor. They had to work grueling hours in tough living conditions, and that was normal.
Throughout the history of the world, wars and violence and brutal conquests were what was expected - it was very much “kill or be killed.”
Throughout the history of the world, tragic natural disasters have taken place, destroying many towns and killing countless people.
Throughout the history of the world, people have let greed, anger, pride, and all the other roots of sin take over and really hurt (or killed) other people.
Throughout the history of the world, people have been dying before they hit an age where it’s socially acceptable to die.
That is normal. It’s also super hard and traumatic… but we are fooling ourselves if we don’t think it’s par for the course.
Now, please don’t hear what I’m not saying: I am not saying these things are easy or that we should just roll over in hopelessness.
If we can do something to change the world for the better, we should! We are charged with the wonderful task of expanding God’s kingdom into a world that (clearly) needs it.
I’m not saying that it’s pointless to pray and ask for miracles - of course, we should keep doing that because God DOES still move today!
I’m also not saying that we should just shrug at hard or evil things with a nonchalant attitude. Should we tell a grieving person, “Well, the earth is ugly, what did you expect?” No, of course not. The problems of evil and hardship are very real, and I promise I will write a blog on that sometime.
What I am saying, perhaps all I am saying, is that we need to start stepping out of our “air-conditioned lives” a little bit more; we need to level-set expectations with reality instead of concocting some utopian standard in our heads that leaves us bitter and entitled.
It’s ok to be bothered by evil and hardships - in fact, that’s a good thing! That means you have the heart of God inside you and that you care about others. Being disturbed by disturbing things means you have a desire for Eden to be restored… and one day it will! Praise God.
But it’s not ok to be so lulled into entitlement by our immense amount of blessings that we start to twist things. What does this look like? One example is the sentiment that God is now the bad guy who isn’t doing enough.
Again, the root of that (sadly) common sentiment is that there is some standard out there where the world is perfect and God is the one not upholding that standard.
“Well, I’m not asking for a perfect world, that would be unrealistic,” one might say. “But less horrible things would be a great place to start!”
Trust me, I also would like to see fewer horrible things in this world. Truly. However, that standard listed above is paradoxical - where exactly do you draw the line where “this amount of hardship is acceptable, but THIS amount is too much”?
Another way to think about it: What age is the acceptable standard for when we should all die? 85? 96? Is it still not sad when those people die? Are there not tears at those funerals? While it is not as sad as a premature death, if “no hardships” is what we are going for, how can we definitively accept death at all? And yet, for the history of the world, every human… has died. It’s one of the few common threads that connects all of us.
So the short answer is that we can’t draw the line on exactly how much hardship should be allowed in this world. And even if we could, which we can’t due to the paradox, can any of us actually implement the new standard? No.
Again, please don’t hear what I am not saying: the desire for a perfect world is a natural one - the idea of Eden is implanted in our hearts because we are God’s creation. The problem is… this world isn’t Eden. This world has consistently proven to be hard.
The hope we Christians have is that we serve, worship, and belong to someone who can, and does, intervene amid this brokenness.
We have hope because God has an amazingly redemptive plan for this challenging earth; this world’s natural state will not get the final say. His plan leads to a new earth whose natural state is perfect, and I can’t wait to see it with all of you, my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, one day.
Remember: He is God. He doesn’t have to do anything. He doesn’t have to intervene at all.
But He does, often! One small example: I am writing this in the dead of summer from my safe and beautiful apartment, with a lovely 4th-floor view, with clean ice water in my cup and, yes, the AC is on. Queens throughout history would have been jealous of ME! That’s kind of a cool thought, huh?
When we look at all the things that we aren’t dealing with right now - things that have consistently been normal throughout history and still happening around the world today - there should be nothing on our lips other than, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.”
With every blessing, we have a decision to make: do we accept it as something we deserve and have earned, or do we acknowledge that it is 100% a gift from God amidst a challenging world that owes us nothing?
Will we let an air-conditioned apartment be the new standard we put every other summer day up against, or will we be deeply grateful for the break we get from the world’s natural state?
Lastly, will we cling tightly to what we have out of fear, or will we share our blessings with those less fortunate than us and trust that God will keep on providing?
As we wrap up, I want to share something with you. While I have been tinkering with this blog over the past few weeks, there have been a few gorgeous, 75-degree days. And, as expected, they were wonderful. God is so good!
My prayer for all of us is that we resist the temptation to listen to the voices that twist God into the “bad guy who should intervene more” and start seeing the truth. The TRUTH is that He is a loving Father who intervenes often: we just have forgotten what “baseline” is.
Bible Verses About a New Heaven and New Earth: Blog by David Jeremiah
Worship Song: Praise by Elevation Worship
Favorite lyric: “As long as I’m breathing, I’ve got a reason to praise the Lord.”
Thanks for reading! If you have any comments you’d like to share, simply reply to this email if you are reading this in your inbox. However, if you are on the Substack app / website, feel free to email me at Miki@mikispeer.com
Please note: For all URL attachments, I do review the songs / sermons before I post them. However, I do not have the time to research every pastor / speaker / church that is associated with the URL link. So! Take the video / song at face value lol.
Also, the only email you will get from ME will be the blog. Looks like Substack sometimes sends things out like promos or advertisements - please know that is not from me and you can ignore that if you want to. Appreciate your patience with the platform!