Day 4207 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 6:24 NIV

The Prosperity Problem

To become wealthy has long since become one of man’s greatest and thus most commonly shared pursuits. And perhaps there’s at least some reasonable reason to that. For ‘tis a fact that with this world we have needs which need to be met such as even such simplicities as food, clothes, housing. And it’s no secret that such things cost money as nothing much here is really free anymore, not that anything ever was. But the problem seems to lie in that within this life in which we need to sometimes buy that which we need, neither anymore are we free.

No, we’re but puppets performing on strings made of money.

And I say this because, well, let’s be honest, all of us have done things for money that we’re maybe not proud of, probably wouldn’t do again, likely even regret having done the first time. Such is life. I mean, down here we’re all given what is a swath of time with which to live a life and despite however much we may have we all want to have something both to do and too something to show for all we’ve done. We, again perhaps even rightly, we want to know our lives mattered, meant something, accomplished something.

We all want to be able to reach our end, whenever it is and however it comes, with what was, if only to us, a story that just maybe could inspire somebody, encourage somebody, help somebody. Yes, we all want to make a difference, and, well, even this demands the ability to afford it as in this world the less you have the less of an impact you’re probably going to have as most folks are only impressed with and thus interested in those who have seemingly achieved that again most common of all societal goals.

One so common that we’ve even come up with schemes to get there quick.

Which, granted, does make sense when considering the limited expanse of our existence as will one day be here ended. And our each knowing that, and that no matter how hard we try to live as if we don’t, it causes us to become hurried within whatever we’re doing which is, again, mostly only always done to achieve for us something won under the sun where we most of us still at least sometimes assume our lives to be lived in their entirety.

And that simply because we’re living here currently and many of us, all of us actually, we’ve lost that childlike ability to believe in something bigger and better such as the promise of life forever.

No, rather we’ve traded that ability to believe in more for our opportunity to have more. It’s a process we call growing up and, as kids who look up to those around us, both because we’re literally dwarfed by their physical stature but also because we admire their ability to do more and reach higher and see further and hold closer even so much more than we come to see we have, we begin to lose that ability as we too grow taller and more able. Yes, this world, as we grow, it begins to show us all that we don’t have, to tell us of all that we do need, to inspire us toward a life of want and wish and worry and greed.

Why?

Because as much as we need some stuff to live, everyone around us is here trying to make a living by selling unto others the sustenance or services that they both know another will pay for and that they’re willing to do the work of in order to offer unto those willing to pay them to.

Everything here has some kind of price tag attached and it’s up to each of us both how much we’re willing to pay for whatever it is that we wish to come our way and also what all we’re willing to do to have that ability to afford whatever it is that we’ve come to become convinced we simply have to have.

It’s literally supply and demand.

One person, group, conglomeration supplies that which the masses need or want, a difference we couldn’t define if our lives depended upon it, and those who don’t know the difference between what they need and how much they don’t line up to buy that which is supplied creating a demand that benefits those who sell that for which the people yell is so amazing, so impressive, so positively needed that everyone and their dog comes running to wherever it is that they can buy this new comfort or convenience or consideration.

And to be honest, anything which exceeds our basic needs such as food and shelter and, yes, clothing as it’s widely considered criminal to walk around naked (though any trip to any town will make you wonder both who cares about the laws and why nobody really enforces them as they should), anything beyond these things is not a need but a want.

And we want things because they make us comfortable. They make us look important and/or feel the same. They bring unto our lives a deeper measure of ease or meaning or perhaps even purpose. For an example I’ll offer you this. This thing I do every day in which I sit to write for a couple of hours worth of my time these posts about the hope I have within the Word that’s been given in which I find pretty much the only hope that we have left.

And I do this typing away on a laptop perched atop a shoebox, both of which cost money and added ease and convenience and, for the shoes at least, satisfied a need. And yet this thing that I do that I truly do believe is at least part of my purpose here, that being the one we all have, whether we’re engaging with it, within it or not, that is to go into all the world and share there the Good News of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, it’s done via things that have made it far easier to do.

For this thing I do via a computer that cost hundreds of dollars, don’t remember how much, that allows me the convenience of sitting in a room all by myself and doing something via technology that once required someone to physically make a trip and have a conversation to accomplish.

I can literally have this here post read, potentially, by someone in Tokyo or Bangkok or London or Botswana.

All with never needing to leave my house.

That is what would be unimaginably easier, more convenient, more comfortable even than the same work which was undertaken by those who had to walk miles across days just to reach another place where they’d have to either talk to people one-by-one, face-to-face, or find some way to gather together a larger crowd unto whom they could then share the News.

Life has become so incredibly easy that we honestly don’t even realize how comfortable and simple and, well, meaningless we’ve all of us sought to make it.

And I say that because I truly believe that life here is meant to be hard. I believe that we’re here to work, to try, to do, to walk and talk and build and barter and become of a belief in these things being a part of our journey through which we’re offered endless opportunities to do as He’s called us to. I honestly believe that we can even make an impact, shine even the faintest shadow of the light of His all surpassing goodness in something so simple as a smile or an ear willing to listen to someone who doesn’t have too many folks to talk to.

But unfortunately such things as these don’t pay the bills.

And we can’t afford the late fees and so we skip these so that we can do other things that do make us money that will buy both what keeps us clothed and fed and safe and, too, other things that just make us happy.

And that’s the prosperity problem.

It’s that affluence affords for us the ability to live beyond necessity in that place of desire. It opens for us a door to more that, well, our hearts just don’t know how to close. The very idea that there exists out there somewhere something made or found by someone that might make our lives easier, safer, more comfortable or convenient has become for us a stumbling block to rival all stumbling blocks.

Why?

Because who alive doesn’t want their life to be better? To be easier? To feel safer? To seem more impressive or accomplished? Who doesn’t want to be better able to enjoy this ride, to find pleasure or peace or success or some measure of self-importance? Again, we all want to feel as if our lives matter. But the problem has become that since our lives have become so much easier and more convenient than they’ve ever been before, what matters to us has changed accordingly.

Gone are the days when people would have to worry about finding food. We’re all probably five minutes or less away from a drive thru. Which also frees us from having to know how to cook, something that a growing portion of people don’t know how to do. Same goes with reading. The concept of reading was once reserved for royalty! A single book could cost a full year’s wages or more back before the advent of printing presses making it easier than having to painstakingly handwrite every word.

These days we give books away for free to people who truly cannot read whatever is written within them!

I’m telling you, we’ve become so rich, so wealthy, so comfortable because of it that we’re literally losing our freedom unto those who are more than willing to take it from us in exchange for whatever ease or convenience they’ve the ability to both offer and convince us that we need.

And, again, whenever the heart learns of want, well, that door never closes.

At best it becomes a life-long battle to make ourselves doubt in whatever this world says we should want.

A battle we both don’t want to lose as this world is filled with so much we want to have but also one we don’t have to lose should we have the ability to afford whatever it is that we don’t want to miss.

Yes, even this is an idea entirely common today, one again summed up within a way that doesn’t require anyone to have even the ability to read as we seem entirely content to force the entire content of a message or concept into as few letters as possible.

Thus we refer to it as fomo.

The fear of missing out.

And indeed, we are a people who all know well this fear as it’s one we’ve all felt or feel in what are a seemingly ever-increasing number of ways in regard to an equally increasing number of things. We’ve even become both able but, and even more troubling, willing to believe that we really might actually need a new phone every year whenever the newest model is released onto the public.

Or another pair of shoes despite the fact that we’ve already 30 pairs and still but two feet. Or another dress to wear to some fancy gala that we’re gonna ask to hang in a closet already begging for mercy as it just can’t hold no more. Or a faster car to get us to the same job we hate quicker so that we can be unhappy even faster as we work our lives away to afford this thing that does nothing other than move rapidly. Or a bigger house to house all the junk we just couldn’t live without, and yet have run out of room to live with in our present accommodations.

Yes, we’re a people who know no limits to all that’s offered us in this life in this world in which there is already more than anyone could ever truly need.

Did my one head need that one more hat?

No.

But unfortunately it was just so cool to look at that I couldn’t be convinced otherwise. And so there it sits across the room from me waiting for me to wear it in the same place that it’s sat since I spent some of my hard-earned money to have it. Something I agreed to do because I bought in to the idea, the understanding, the realization that there’s formed a horde of ever-hungry collectors who would be scooping it up whenever it was released, meaning that if I wanted one I’d have to do the same.

Thus I too am one here but playing along to the game as what’s but a puppet dangling from strings made of money made by those who make the things that I cannot allow myself to imagine going on without.

And yet going on is what we’re doing no matter what we have or how little we’ve not.

Again, the prosperity problem.

It’s a dilemma that decides our decisions for us. It determines where we focus and what we focus on as we do. It directs our feet toward those paths upon which or at the end of we think we’ll find something that we’ll like. It clouds our mind with this idea that we need something that isn’t anywhere near an actual need. Again, our needs are simple! Food, water, clothing, shelter.

These are the things that we, at least potentially, cannot survive without. The food and water especially. The clothing definitely helps whenever it gets really cold and a roof over our heads is really nice for keeping hail from bouncing off of them or whirlwinds from sweeping us up in their violent twisting, depositing us later somewhere other than wherever we were.

We need these things.

We don’t need watches. We don’t need tvs. We don’t need books or movies or computers or lawn mowers or sports cars or professional sports or politics or preferences or opinions or arguments or debates or delusions or denials or the general defilement that we’ve all forced upon life itself by having allowed all of these things to have become so important that we do think them a need.

We need food. We need water. We need clothing. We need shelter.

Everything else is luxury.

And the problem with luxury is that it makes us comfortable. And the problem with comfort is that it talks us into staying where we are. And the problem with staying where we are is that we are in a fallen world living as a fallen people who continue to fall for every lie that anyone is willing to tell us, sell us in regard to whatever it is that they want us to think we need so that from them we’ll buy what they need to sell us so that they can afford to buy what they too don’t need.

It’s a truly vicious cycle as it strips us of our awareness as to the unmoving hierarchy of life’s importance.

And it does this by inviting us to consider other things as able to provide what we’re able to forget God always has.

And it does this by speaking directly to our pride which seeks always that pathway through life in which we can stand proudly and say, “Hey, look at me! Looks at how amazing my life is. Look at how impressive I am. Look at how much stuff I have. Look at how big my house is and how fast my car drives and how I can afford to fly in a private jet that I’ve convinced other people to buy for me because they believe me to be the only one who can go and do what God has put us all here to.”

Yes, the prosperity gospel has allowed many to become so rich and famous that they’re considered the only ones among us who can know the Bible well enough to go elsewhere and, once there, convince other people that they too can become that wealthy simply by, well, giving them money.

It’s even called a collection plate as it’s passed around to take from those who are willing to give to what they can only hope is a good use of their time and effort and energy and, yeah, hope.

And yet we’re seeing more and more that it isn’t as many well-known religious figures are proven to have lost their faith in their hunt for the figures.

All because money is truly the root of evils. Not because money is evil as we can use it help others, to feed our families, to build little huts for poor kids in Botswana.

But how often do we do that?

Or perhaps a little less severe, how many other things do we do with it also?

How much stuff do we have around us that we don’t need that we literally spent time of our lives and thoughts in our minds becoming convinced we did need? How many things do we not anymore realize we could do without? How much has wealth been allowed to cloud our minds and their ability to imagine, to explore, to learn of all the more that is still to come?

How much can we really say we’re focused on getting ready to leave this world when any of our interests or devotions are still spread amongst the commotion of a culture lost in consumption?

And that of things that we can afford or at the least hope we’ll be able to one day?

Friends, money is the root of all the evil we do because it affords us the ability to do things we don’t need to do, maybe don’t even want to do, all of which we do anyway simply to have more by which to buy more of what is also what we don’t need, maybe don’t even really want. Money distracts us with its endless ability to make our lives seemingly better, easier, safer, sadly more meaningful.

Yes, those who have here the most are considered the best.

So much so that we even elect only the rich to lead our nations as they’re the only ones who can afford to enter the race anyway.

But friends, my point is that chasing after money is only a race to last place as, though within this place money can help us in many ways and buy for us many things, it only does so by being allowed to become our god as we serve it in a far deeper and more dire devotion than we do the God who created oceans and forests and provides in them both food for us and things to build shelters and ways to travel so as to communicate in which we could convey whatever it is that may be most important to us.

What is most important to us and just how much of its perceived importance is based upon how easy or comfortable it makes us?

We’re a people who prioritize comfort and ease and, yes, money is great at achieving, affording these things.

But the easier our lives are here the more comfortable we’ll be living them. And the more comfortable we are living them the less interested we’ll be in leaving them.

Indeed, we’re all the rich man who turned away from Jesus sad, angry, frustrated because He has the audacity to ask that we go and get rid of all we have in trade for a life spent following the Way who had here, from the start, no place to lay His head.

Christ was not here a Man of comfort but rather of confrontation, of exclusion, of affliction, of misery, of pain, of a literal life lived in the fire and lost in the flame of a people who found in Him only blame for His having came to tell us that we need less than we think we do and that our thinking that we need more has caused us to open the door to a kind of sin that is far too comfortable for us to ever want to leave behind.

He came here to die.

And yet our most commonly shared focus, goal, commitment is to ideal of making a living.

But while we’re all so worried about making ends meet, we’re likely unaware of just how close we are to meeting our end here and thus too perhaps even unbothered by the fact that we may know next to nothing of the Way, the Truth, the Life.

Why?

Because He isn’t comfortable and nor is His path through this place.

And that’s the problem with prosperity:

It leaves us unable to say the same.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold