A Good Gentile - don't be!

I remember when I first became a Christian, almost thirty years ago. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, gave me a Bible. I started reading in Matthew. Everything was fine until I hit the Sermon on the mount - especially Matthew 6:19 through 6:34. Jesus teaches us that our preoccupation with attaining possessions and material wealth, even to the extent of obtaining basic needs like clothing and food, should not motivate our lives. Instead, we are told that God already knows we need these things. And, like the birds or the flowers, He will provide for our needs.

I grew up being taught that you needed to dedicate your life to hard work and achievement. Success is measured by what you have. The old joke that whoever dies with the most toys wins spoke an ironic truth to us. Thus, professions and businesses that generated the greatest amount of income and wealth were labelled successes. We were taught to go to college and to work hard in one of those areas. So, MD's, MBA's, JD's, BS and MS degrees in science, math and engineering, these were all areas to pursue. Alternatively, you could start a successful business: contracting, retail, etc. So, you either were the boss, the talent or the owner. These were the marks of success.

No one, not one time, ever said that the person who dedicated his life to seeking out God's Kingdom and God's righteousness was successful. In fact, many wealthy men I knew begrudged supporting a minister because he didn't really work. How much did he deserve? After all, we paid for his house and his car and his office. If it wasn't for us, he wouldn't have a job to begin with - these thoughts emanate from the mind set that you are valued by what you produce and acquire.

Yet, the most influential teacher in history, the King of Kings, the Son of God, the great counselor, the Savior, who is credited with understanding the true nature of the world and of God and of our relationship to him, told us, specifically, not to worry about obtaining success or things.

Instead, He taught that it was the most important thing for us to go out and seek God - to find his Kingdom. Along the way, we are also to seek out His righteousness (His goodness - holiness - attributes that we are supposed to then emulate.

I am fifty-two years old. I've spent my entire adult life pursing the wrong thing, according to the scripture. According to the teaching of Christ, to whom I have dedicated my life and in whom I have hope for my eternal future, I have been wrong for thirty years. When you are twenty, life seems endless and time impossibly long. At fifty, time becomes a lot more real. Suddenly, you the end of your life becomes much more relevant and the twenty, thirty or forty or so years you have left become increasingly valuable. Everything comes into question.

I think perhaps that this dose of reality is healthy - I think it also is responsible for the strange thing we call a mid-life crisis. If you ask my wife, Karen, she'll tell you I've been having a mid-life crisis for ten years. I guess mine is chronic. But, at least one of the causes of my angst is that I worry about this particular issue: I want to live correctly, to live for the right purpose - I don't want to waste my life.

The fear I have is that, after a long career trying to earn money and instead developing an increasing debt load, I will find that I have foolishly pursued the wrong thing. However, after fifty years of conditioning, and thirty years of pursuing the goal of the gentile, I don't know how not to do that. I wasn't sure thirty years ago when I learned about it. I can tell you that I have failed to learn it through the pursuit of wealth and prosperity.

So, I come to this point - my life and the world that I life if are in direct conflict with the teaching of Jesus. Our entire western culture is now based on consumption and debt. It is not just in this passage, but in many passages in the Bible that consumption and debt are warned against. The debtor is the slave to the lender. And this is a truth. I cannot now turn away from a career that generates my income. I can't even modify it to any great extend. Why? Because I owe - we have struggled for almost ten years to eliminate most of our debt. However, we didn't plan well for college. So, in addition to a mortgage, we owe a significant amount of student loans - both for my second career as a lawyer and for our children's college educations.

I do not begrudge any of this, but it has created a trap. I cannot change unless I can either pay off these debts first or find an alternative source of income, since it is my responsibility to pay. I take that responsibility seriously. However, it forces me into a position that leaves little choice or flexibility. So, what do I do?

I am trying to figure out how to integrate into my life, Jesus' teaching. I am trying to eliminate my consumptive habits. I have other bad habits, too, but one thing at a time. I am not only battling my own nature, I am battling the essence of our culture. Even our government behaves this way - they are consumptive and creators of debt. And, they give us money back in the hope that we will buy more stuff and stimulate our economy, which is driven by consumption. There is no thought to sufficiency - we have to grow, that is the mantra? Why? Because if we don't grow, we can't pay back the debt.

Why is a healthy economy measured in terms of growth? I guess that is a loaded question. There are different kinds of growth. There is a natural growth that is associated with the increase in the population. What I mean, though, is geometric growth. The economy is seen as healthy only if it is growing faster than the natural increase. In other words, we all have to buy more, every year, for the economy to work. This means that our incomes have to go up every year, so we have more to spend. Incidentally, this is also the government's motive in trying to grow income - because increased income means increased taxes - this is the gambl they are making when they create long term debt. When the economy doesn't grow as fast as they need it to to create increasing revenue, then the model fails and we can go out of business. No one wants that, so everyone's mantra has become grow, grow, grow.

That's where the debt comes in, if we use debt to grow, we can increase the economy faster because debt creates leverage. Instead of only having ten dollars to invest in my business, product, or service, I can invest ten times that by borrowing. That's what business does, and now, that's what individuals do - which is what caused the bubble and melt down in real estate in the first decade of this century. Since the depression, in the 1930s, that is also what the government has done. It is beyond any party affiliation - some borrow more than others, but, mostly, that is dictated by the times, not by the politics. The politics seem to dictate more about where the money is spent and how it is raised - it doesn't address the underlying issue of pursuing growth.

So, in every facet of our culture, we are urged to spend - from our government to our businesses. Television and any other media that can be used to reach out to us is a tool to urge us to buy stuff, to seek things out. Everywhere I turn, I am bombarded by people urging me to buy their product or service. I'm sure that many of these products or services are fine, but, most of them are not necessary. I think the salesman know this, too. So, they try to show my why I need them - they try to show me how my life will be better if I buy them.

The purpose of it all is to create a society based on pursing the things we want or think we want and things we need. But Jesus taught us differently:

Mat 6:19

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,

	Mat 6:20	but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
	Mat 6:21	For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
	Mat 6:22	"The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,
	Mat 6:23	but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
	Mat 6:24	"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
	Mat 6:25	"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
	Mat 6:26	Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
	Mat 6:27	And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
	Mat 6:28	And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,
	Mat 6:29	yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
	Mat 6:30	But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
	Mat 6:31	Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'
	Mat 6:32	For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
	Mat 6:33	But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
	Mat 6:34	"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

 
There are a lot of things to talk about in this passage. For example, the issue of loyalty - who do you serve? But, in the end, it comes down to faith. We scramble after things because we thing we need them and if we don't go get them, then we won't have them. This is motivation through fear. If we are fearful, this means that we don't really trust what Jesus is saying, that God will provide if we seek Him first. Instead, we rely on ourselves and don't rely on God.

The second motivator is greed. Beyond the basics of life, what do we really need? Yet, because of the culture in which we live, a culture that values the rich more than the poor, the wealthy over the middle class, those that have more things and higher quality things over those who have less. If you shop at Walmart, you are subject to ridicule by those who shop at higher end stores. Pocketbooks made out of exactly the same materials can sell for hundreds of dollars or twenty dollars, depending on the logo and the name. The same with shoes, or pants or suits or golf clubs or cars. Houses that function exactly the same can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars difference in price depending on the location.

This all arises out of our greed nature - or lust for better, more, faster, etc. The pursuit of the gentile has rocketed out of control. And, remember, our culture encourages it, from the President on down, from Wall Street to Madison Avenue to Hollywood Blvd. We are urged, encouraged, coached, cajoled, guilted, and teased into super-consumption, until it drives our lives. We are offered a multitude of entertainment choices to keep us glued to the marketplace of commercials. It is no wonder that this problem is pervasive.

Yet, in a soft, simple voice Jesus instructs us not to go down that road. Or, if we are on it, to change pathways. Stop being anxious. Stop pursuing what the gentiles want. Don't be a good gentile - instead, seek first God's Kingdom. Shed the fear and greed and learn to operate in faith. This is my goal, now, today.

As I go forward, with this blog, I will continue to discuss the issues that arise from this passage.