What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. – Ecclesiastes 3:1-14
If there is a mean old nasty brute named Satan, I’m pretty sure such an individual would find that, rather than encouraging us to do evil, it would be far more efficient and successful to merely convince us to do nothing. Entropy is easy to slide into and hard to overcome. If we believe the insidious lie “I am powerless,” great potential goes unrealized, and the world persists in not being as blessed a place as it might be.
But I think an even smoother Evil One would find a way to take all our joy out of work by making it obligatory. Just think if we turned all of the good we ever did into a price we have to pay to earn our way into paradise, soon, rather than the Kingdom, we’d be building resentments toward our God and the people God forces us to reach out and help.
But I think the smoothest One Who Opposes of all would jump on the cheap-grace/sloppy-agape bandwagon and try to lead us to believe that social and economic justice efforts were unnecessary, even undesirable traits of an immature faith. “We’ve received this gift through pure grace,” the thinking goes. “To fight for the cause of the destitute orphan and the hopeless widow is somehow less than faithful.”
The problem in all of this is simple: We mess up when we place God off somewhere away from us, up on some cloud swatting at those persistent little cherubs buzzing around his head, peering down from afar to see if we pass the test and will be allowed into the celestial party.
Jesus told us so many times that the “Kingdom of God” was a party about to get started right nearby, among us. He was all about doing the right thing because we like it, accepting and forgiving others because we love them, and seeing God’s work in every scrap of society and creation. Why else would Jesus, when asked about paradise, tell stories about sheep and wheat and housewives and flowers?
“Wherever two or more are gather in my name…” is a promise of presence among us. What if, instead of seeing our day’s work as buying a ticket to visit some far off deity once we’ve bit the big one, we recognized God moving through our hands and tongues. What if we saw ourselves as extensions of a very present God, reaching out to other extensions of that same God? What if God lives and loves in the open space between and within us?
In the story of the rich young man, this eager kid has implicitly followed all the ten commandments all his life, but is dying to find what else he must do to buy himself eternal life. Jesus recognizes the flawed thinking: that God’s love must be earned, achieved and owned through our own power and skill. He therefore tells the young man to remove the one obstacle between him and fully recognizing that God is already swimming all around him. “Your wealth seems to be blocking your view. Get rid of it and come with me.”
And the man turns and leaves, unwilling to surrender who he has become to become who he most wants to be. I see no evidence that Jesus told every rich man to give it all away. He is not fighting wealth, but a spiritual myopia that makes us blind to God and godliness all around us.
God can be in every breakroom conversation. Angels can sing through every chance meeting and simple gesture. If you want holy bliss, it is all in a day’s work.
I find it sad that so many confuse fighting wealth with the choice to not let wealth be the most important thing. Material wealth is not a bad thing, but as in the story about the rich young man, it can get in the way of what is really important if it is all we let ourselves value.
ReplyDeleteI think that in an increasingly impersonal world, we are turning to wealth to measure worth. Sure, there has always been materialism and greed. But people today seem to be increasingly less likely to have the time for (or the interest in) getting to know their neighbors. When you interact with someone you don't know, you are naturally curious about him. By looking at his clothes, car, house, whatever, you can answer many questions quickly. Again, this is not a bad thing in itself. But we let ourselves get so busy that we often forget to look beyond these initial answers - we stop at material wealth.
I believe that the less personal world that equates material wealth with success is also at fault for our indifference, even coldness, toward our fellow human beings. If wealth is worth, the poor are not worth our time. If people are sick or starving, it must be their fault - they are lazy, and selfish for asking for help. How tragic that in the "land of opportunity", we write off entire social classes as worthless, even parasitic. Sure, there will always be people who are at fault for their situation...but what about those who are born into a terrible neighborhood, children who are left to fend for themselves? Consider a young, inner-city child of a drug-addicted teenage mother and her abusive boyfriend. Can we honestly expect all of his needs to be met? If he is focused on mere survival, is he likely to develop the tools necessary to be an honor student when he gets older? Is it really his fault if he has to devote his energy to keeping himself alive instead of going to school? It may seem like a stretch, but if you look at poverty and crime statistics, you will see that it is very real. Yet I know many people who firmly believe that a person's environment has no effect on how financially successful he can become.
I guess that is why I firmly believe that social justice is important. Every single person is different, and you can't claim that "they're all the same" (whoever "they" are.) I don't think that we need to get rid of all material wealth - it is only natural for some people to have more than others. But we do need to make sure that the most basic needs of all are met.
Chances are that most of us here on the blog are living in the United States, and are therefore quite wealthy on a global scale. We should not abandon "the least of these"..."they" are just as capable of godly works as "we" are.
I was just thinking about this very thing this morning on the drive into work- how people put God off in the distance, setting a goal of finally coming to God on the day they die- never realizing God has been with them every instant of their lives.
ReplyDeleteBut this separation of God from Man serves a purpose and I believe the idea of that separation has always been intentional. If you teach a worshipper in her/his earliest religious education that God is distant, apart and unknowable, you can then dictate what steps that person need take to finally reach their beloved God and more effectively guide them to serve your own purposes.
The same thing is done in politics. People come to admire and follow particular pundits and look to them for "the truth". The pundits then feed them all manner of lies or tortured truths to guide them to believe what is politically expedient for the pundits', or the pundits' "masters", personal agenda- even so far as to advise said followers to abandon their house of worship should it speak in terms of "social or economic justice". Said pundit could even equate the term with a political philosophy with the same root word: Socialism, which is vilified as being inherently evil.
Hey, it could happen.
But if a person who loves God were to recognize God's ever-presence in their daily lives, recognize and accept that presence, perhaps they would be endowed with the insight to recognize the falsehoods presented by such pundits and see them and their agenda for what they really are.
So much trouble may brew when we separate ourselves from God.