A Different Kind of Life

Greedier Than I Think

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
--Luke 12:15

Greed. Such a nasty idea. Just the word alone conjures up negative connotations in our minds—thoughts of Ebenezer Scrooge combined with Donald Trump come to mind for me (which is really kind of funny, since my natural reaction when I think of Ebenezer Scrooge is to think of the Disney animated version…that combo gives me Donald Trump in animated duck form…)

Back to the thought at hand—I generally wouldn’t consider myself a greedy person. (Nor would most people, I’m guessing.) In fact, I like to consider myself fairly generous. Yet as I consider things lately, I have been wondering if I am perhaps quite a bit more greedy than I would like to admit, or perhaps quite a bit more greedy than I even consciously realize. So, I’m going to hit on this idea for a couple more days, attempting to dig a little deeper into my own heart each time, and see what comes of it.

We’ll start with what lies at face value. Here we have a guy coming to Jesus and telling him to tell his brother to divide the inheritance with him. Now as was recently pointed out to me, this would not have been the job of Jesus or any other religious teacher of the day. There was a specific class of legal experts that dealt with the division of inheritances (which would have been primarily land)—rabbis like Jesus did not deal with it. So already there is something fishy at work—the guy comes to Jesus basically asking him to endorse his plan. Jesus recognizes it immediately, and tells everyone within earshot to watch out for all kinds of greed—that your life isn’t encapsulated by the stuff you possess.

Now back to me—I readily agree with this. If you asked me if my life was summed up by the stuff I have, my likely answer would be “Man, I hope not.” Yet at the same time, I have to be honest with myself—how tightly do I hold to the little that I do have? (Which is quite a lot, if I look at my pile on a global scale.) How frustrated do I get about bills, or about a dinner tab that doesn’t quite get split right?

More deeply, how much do I act like my life depends on holding on to that stuff?

Maybe I’m greedier than I think.

Self-Deception

Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. Don’t think only about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing.
--Philippians 2:3-4

I read an interesting book today entitled Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute—if you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend it. To summarize briefly, it deals with self-deception and it’s effect on interpersonal relations as well as individual and organizational success. And to summarize even more briefly, I am the problem. Of course, I suspected that I was the problem before I even picked the book up; this just serves to detail a little more clearly of why.

At this point, you may be wondering what this mini-confessional has to do with anything else. You see, the basic concept described in this book is the same one that is illustrated in the above passage. Our deepest and most significant conflict, problems, and interpersonal frustrations come from our tendency to see other people as objects (problems, irritations, inconveniences, whatever word you would like to fill in the blank) rather than as people with hopes, dreams, desires, and goals equally important to them as ours are to us. Yet when we are deceived by ideas of our own importance and “rightness”, we are not only unable to see others accurately, but are also pushed farther into a vicious cycle of self-justification. Put simply, I see others as the problem, so I treat them harshly, which causes them to be frustrated and likely cause more problems, thus justifying my original selfish view.

The Apostle Paul (writing some 2000 years before the Arbinger Institute), hit on this very same idea—that our ability to successfully exist in community with others as God designed us to (whether that be in a workplace, family, friendship or some other setting) is directly linked to our ability to honestly see and care about others.

So with this thought in mind, I ask two questions:

1. How have you treated someone as an object rather than a person in the last week?
2. What did you gain by it? (i.e. Did it make the relationship better or worse?)

Divine Humility

(Today’s post comes from The Business of Heaven by C.S. Lewis—I found it particularly thought provoking…)

We are perplexed to see misfortune falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people—on capable, hardworking mothers of families or diligent, thrifty, little tradespeople, on those who have worked so hard, and so honestly, for their modest stock of happiness and now seem to be entering on the enjoyment of it with the fullest right.  How can I say with sufficient tenderness what here needs to be said?  It does not matter that I know I must become, in the eyes of every hostile reader, as it were personally responsible for all the sufferings I try to explain—just as, to this day, everyone talks as if St. Augustine wanted unbaptized infants to go to Hell.  But it matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth.  Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and that if they have not leaned to know Him they will be wretched.  And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover.  The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.  I call this a Divine humility because it is a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up ‘our own’ when it is no longer worth keeping.

Sacred vs. Selfish

Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
--Genesis 1:31

In continuation with the ideas raised in yesterday’s post, I would like to offer a bit of what I see as a part of our ongoing creation responsibility to “do the work of God in the world.” This involves something that doesn’t seem particularly religions per se, but in truth really gets to the heart of how we see God and the world that He has made.

I have been captivated recently by the idea of “going green”—by the ongoing effort to reduce the imprint of our lives on the physical world around us. More specifically, I was listening to a sermon the other day in which the speaker said that if we were going to call ourselves the church or the people of God, then we should be leading the way in taking care of that which God created and which He apparently loves and thinks very highly of.

Put simply, I like this idea, and yet I am very humbled by it. I am totally on board with the idea that God loves his creation (not just people, but all of the created world), and that since it has value in His sight, then it should have value in ours as well. But at the same time, I know my own laziness, selfishness, and greed. I know the darkness in my own heart, and I know the voice that says “Don’t worry about it…it’s not your fault….it’s someone else’s problem…you’re not that bad…” and so on.

So how do we deal with this? I guess the root question that I am asking is not really how do we take care of the earth, but rather how do we address this selfishness in practical, significant, and lasting ways?

Our First Job

God blessed them and told them, “Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters over the fish and birds and all the animals.” And God said, “Look! I have given you the seed-bearing plants throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given all the grasses and other green plants to the animals and birds for their food.” And so it was.
--Genesis 1:28-30

This passage, given that it takes us back to the beginning of the story, necessarily poses the question of purpose. What did God say for man to do? “Be fruitful and multiply (possibly the only command of God that people have never been upset about following), fill the earth, subdue it and rule over it.” This is the job that God gave to humanity in the beginning. Now before we take this too far, consider for a minute exactly what there was to be done in the beginning? What jobs were available? Nothing needed to be planted, nothing needed to be fought, nothing needed to be rebuilt—there were no employees to manage, no checkbooks to balance, and no dinners to be made. There was only this new creation that needed to be overseen and looked out for—a job that previously had been solely the realm of God. But God comes to Adam and says, “I want you to help me manage this new creation. I’m giving it to you to feed and sustain you, and I want you to take charge of it.” Adam—who had been created in the image of God—is given the incredible opportunity to participate meaningfully in the work of God in the world. Adam got to be a part of what God was doing in the world.

So from the very beginning, we see that God intended for man to be a part of the work that He was doing. God did not create man and leave him to do his own thing. He did not create man and give him something meaningless to do. He created him and gave him the incredible opportunity to do the work of God in the world.

This, however, poses the question—what all are we supposed to be doing now, if we were designed to do the work of God in the world?

This is the good stuff...

When the master of ceremonies tasted the water that was now wine, not knowing where it had come from (though, of course, the servants knew), he called the bridegroom over. “Usually a host serves the best wine first,” he said. “Then, when everyone is full and doesn’t care, he brings out the less expensive wines. But you have kept the best until now!” This miraculous sign at Cana in Galilee was Jesus’ first display of his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
--John 2:9-11

Hosting a party is a lot of work, causes a great deal of stress, and involves a great deal of potential embarrassment—it is no wonder that there are entire industries devoted to nothing more than planning and executing the most important “parties” in our lives (weddings foremost among these). Here in John 2 we see this stress come to life at a wedding Jesus was attending with his mother and disciples. (It should be noted here that weddings in ancient times were massive social occasions, involving most of the community and lasting multiple days—any kind of failure in the execution of such an event would be a massive embarrassment in front of the entire community.) And as it turns out, the wedding experiences the worst nightmare of any party host—they ran out of wine.

A lot of interesting things can be taken from this story of Jesus’ first miracle—the fact that Jesus saved the host from a great deal of embarrassment, that he proved himself in the eyes of his followers, that it seems like it was done at the request of his mother, and so on. Yet the thing that strikes me as particularly compelling is contained in one little phrase—“you have kept the best wine until now.” Jesus doesn’t just make more wine, he makes the best wine. Not only does he rescue the host from an extremely embarrassing situation, he turns that situation into a great honor for the host. He takes what was a devastating failure about the party and transforms it into a monumental success.

Too often we tend to see God as a harsh taskmaster, eagerly anticipating a chance to crush the merest hint of fun or celebration. Yet here we see God not only enjoying the celebration, but using his power to make that celebration extraordinary. His very first display of divine power did not heal the sick, give sight to the blind, or raise the dead. He simply made a good party better. That’s a whole different image of God than the one I tend to hear about.

A God Who Weeps

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how much he loved him!” --John 11:33-36

All of us—regardless of social station, economic affluence, or religious belief—experience hardship at some point in our lives. We would all readily attest that we live in a broken world, and that misery happens to the best and worst among us. Obviously, this begs the question of “Why?” Why would an all-powerful, supposedly loving God allow suffering and misery to happen? Yet such questions obscure the more significant truth contained in the above passage.

You see, if we allow ourselves to become fixated on the explanation of “why” (which despite the hundreds of books written about it, will probably never be explained adequately in this life), we miss the greater truth about the character of God that Jesus reveals here. In the midst of the suffering of Mary and Martha (over the death of their brother Lazarus), Jesus comes and is present with and weeps with them. Do not miss the significance of this—that the one who created the whole world stood alongside Mary and Martha and shared their pain—he wept with them and wept for them.

While we may never in this life receive an answer for why we experience suffering, we may take comfort in the fact that there is a God who shares our pain—who weeps with us.

Where is Your Life?

Generally these posts will begin with some type of quoted passage to spark the discussion for the day, but as this is the first one, today will be a bit different—just a simple question.

As we deal with this whole idea of “a different kind of life” and what the impact of our lives are on the people and world around us, it seems appropriate that we first consider how things are.  As with any decision, we must know where we stand before we know where best to go.  However, this kind of self-analysis requires some brutal and often painful honesty, so be ye warned.

So with that, I pose a simple question—“Where is your life?”  In what things—relationships, jobs, goals, possessions, dreams—do you place the majority of your thought, effort, and resources?  Where do your passions and loyalties lie?  What things would you die for?  What would you give up everything in your life to achieve or possess? 

Can you isolate it down at all?  Narrow it down to one or two things that are the most important to you, that encapsulate who you are and what you stand for? 

If you can, are they worth it to you?   And if you can’t, then why not?

Toss this around in your head today—we’ll come back to it soon.