The Unfairness of God

I don’t think the Prodigal Son’s older brother gets a fair shake. 

In Luke 15 Jesus tells a story about a father with two sons.  The younger son proves to be a scoundrel, eventually imploding into a scandal that gutted the family’s net worth.   The older brother held his ground, remaining at home, pouring himself into the family business.  It’s safe to say that without him the place would have fallen apart.

If you’ve read the parable you know, of course, that this loser brother comes home, repents and is welcomed back with the family’s best bottle of Dom Perignon. The old father seems to forget all about the disgrace and wasted inheritance and simply throws his arms around the filthy shoulders of his homeless son.  The older brother sees his father cave completely on his boundaries and he stomps outside.  “This jerk has undone everything we’ve worked for and you slaughter the fatted calf!  I’ve slaved for you all these years and you’ve never even offered me a goat to barbecue with my friends!”

He has a point.  What good is it to work your gluteus maximus off when your slacker brother gets a better reward that you do?   Doesn’t all your work even matter? 

I’ve felt that way at times.  I’m dedicated my entire adult life to serving faithfully as a pastor, to being the best husband and dad that I possibly can…surely that’s got to count for something, right?  Certainly God could cut me a break on some of the struggles of life.  Yet there are all too many times when God seems to miss some great opportunities to make my life easier.  

At times like that, I find the older brother’s complaint feels pretty natural:  “Look, I’ve slaved for you all these years, and you’ve never even given me a goat (or break on car repairs, or a sudden surge in church attendance or some other fantasy come to life)!

When it comes right down to it, God has a strange sense of fairness.  The grace that led the father to welcome his runaway son is the same grace that leads him to offer a place in his family to spiritually-confused people like you and me who often have little clue just what He’s done for us.  And it’s the same grace that leads him to stoop to use quirky, sin-tainted folks like me to announce his good news to others who need it as badly as I do.

The point:  I thank God that He’s not fair.  His unfairness is our only chance. 

The issue for me is not really unfairness:  it keeps getting easier for me to see how much I benefit from God’s unfairness.  The issue for me is usually control.   I wish God would exercise his unfairness in a way that would conform more closely to my expectations.   I often wish He would work out his lavish grace in a way that would match what I happen to have on my Christmas list right now.

How about you—what does it take for you to settle into God’s grace?

Good for Nothing

Grace can really mess with your head if you if you take it too seriously.   A little grace is good: it gives a reason why Jesus had to die on the cross and a place to turn for comfort when we fail.  

But if you pursue grace much further than that it can really start to mess with your head.    After all, what good is there from going to church every Sunday if God is going to grant the same salvation to someone who loves Him but loves the Sunday paper even more?  What's the benefit of resisting the urge to cheat on your exams or even on your spouse when God's only going shower the same forgiveness on every repentant liar who comes groveling back to him when the regrets start to hit? 

If you allow too much grace into your life it starts to erode things.  Pretty soon even fine upstanding church-folks (like you and me)  find we don’t have a leg to stand on.  Things start to crumble.

And. from the Bible's point of view, that's probably good.  In the book of Romans the Apostle Paul is pretty clear on the fact that everyone is going to crumble towards something.  He calls it being “slaves” either to sin or slaves to God.  Keeping our distance from grace means keeping our distance from God.  Some of God’s greatest blessings come when He leads us to crumble before Him, whether we want to or not, as the seedlings of His new life begin to shoot through the dirt in our hearts.

If being good is really good for nothing, then most of us probably don't have a leg to stand on.  But then again, maybe we don't need a leg to stand on.  

The gospel of Jesus Christ has always been based on the outrageous idea that God loves us more than we can, uh...stand.  We want to put our best foot forward to make a good impression in heaven's eyes, but God seems to have arranged things so we never really get the chance to get that best foot in the door.  Instead He reaches out to draw us...with a nail-scarred hand.  The church of Jesus Christ has always been a haven of people who limp in without a leg to stand on.  That's why I seem to fit in, for instance.

When was the last time you felt crazy-loved by God?

Ever hate your job?

( Living Large: Looking for More in an Age of Less, Part 3)

Success is a critical part of the good life for us.  Everybody knows that, right? 

Granted in a 3^rd world, more primitive setting people might not worry about this quite a much.  When you’re living in a hut in some jungle or desert wasteland all you want to do is survive, but most of us educated people living in what we might call developed countries aim for more than that.  We don’t want to merely have lived.  We want to have really lived. 

Our language reflects that:  we want to “live it up”.   We look at wealthy, successful people and marvel:  “wow, they really know how to live”.   “Man, that’s the life,” we may conclude as we watch them enjoy the fruits of their success.  We sum all this up by expressing our desire to “get a life”.

The writer of Ecclesiastes looks at all this “getting a life” and once again pushes back against it.   In Eccl. 2 he describes all he achieved:  “I undertook great projects…I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me…yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;  nothing was gained under the sun.” 

Once again the writer of Ecclesiastes questions the real value of something whose benefit we would generally take to be self-evident.  Of course it’s good to be successful, right?   We might say.  Ecclesiastes challenges that—really?

This leads us, once again, to ask “why?”.   Exactly why do we assume it would be so good to be successful in life?  Is it because the things we accomplish really matter so much in the universe?   Do we really think the world will be a much better place because we sold more widgets than anyone else in our region?

Imagine this:  imagine you’re talking with someone from Haiti who’s about your age.   Let’s say that that person slept in the street last night because their shack was of course destroyed in the earthquake a while back.  Or maybe they’ve been putting out a heroic  effort to carve out a life for themselves in one of the relocation camps.  Now picture yourself trying to explain to that person just why it was so critical that you accomplish whatever ambitions you were pursuing this past week.  Why it was so important that you landed that overtime pay, or nailed this meeting or get this promotion.  Try and explain to someone who’s had to give up a child because he couldn’t scrounge up enough food to feed her just why your career is worth the sleep you lose over it. 

Chances are the stress we have from our careers, or lack of them, isn’t really the point.   The point is usually something bigger, deeper than making or selling more widgets than anyone else in the company.

The underlying point usually has little to do with widgets and more to do with significance.  We want to be remarkable, and we’re afraid we’ll only turn out to be ordinary.

That longing for significance is actually a good thing.  It comes from something very important that God hard-wired into each of us—the innate sense that we were created for a purpose.   God designed us with an ache to accomplish things that haven’t been accomplished yet.  That’s not the problem.

The difficulty, though, comes when we begin to think that our personal career plans will really touch this.  The disappointing reality is that many of our career successes tend to have a pretty short shelf life.  It feels great to finally land a job after you’ve been unemployed, but before you know it that job becomes…a job.  It feels great to get the widget sales award for the month, but then the very next month they turn around and give it to someone else and you have to go back to climbing the ladder.   It feels great to be recognized with a promotion or with some new perk, but before long that promotion becomes the new normal and you find you have to aim still higher in order to really feel like you’re somebody.  You stake out your kingdom in the widget world, only to discover that someone else’s kingdom is being staked out right over top of your boundaries. 

Ecclesiastes puts it this way:   “So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.  For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it.  This too is meaningless and a great misfortune (Eccl. 2:20-21).”

In contrast, the Sermon on the Mount talks about pursuing someone else’s dreams.  “Seek first (God’s) kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt. 6:33).   A passage like this is based on the underlying story line of the Bible:  a good creation was ruined by human rebellion (Gen 1-3) just as we were warned.  God loved us, however, enough that he was willing to do whatever it took to reclaim not only us but also the entire creation he had designed for us.  To do that he carved out his original people, Israel, and through them he crept into our world to position himself to suffer for us so that we could live with him.  In doing this he would not only be able to provide forgiveness for our sins, but also bring a renewal to our entire creation.  

The Bible refers to this cosmic clean-up as the Kingdom of Christ.   And, more amazing still, he invites you and me to participate in this amazing venture with him.  To have our sins forgiven and our lives healed.  To spread the word of this unfolding wonder, to starts homes that mirror his grace, to create great art and make scientific discoveries and…yes, even to make widgets in a way that can make this world a better place.  Each of us has the opportunity to step into a custom-created role into this marvelous plan. 

When we begin to realize that God may have specifically called us to make our widgets or to teach our students or to serve our customers (or even write our blogs or preach our sermons) we find that this changes everything.  Suddenly the shelf life factor becomes a non-issue.  The work that you and I do, or the dreams that you and I may pursue take on an eternal significance.  These things that we do each day prove to be far more than simply ways to pay bills or to keep busy.  Somehow, in some way, the career dreams that he has planted in our hearts are part of his eternal career dream for his entire creation.

We’re not just selling this month’s widgets or working today’s shift at the plant or teaching this week’s lesson plans.  Somehow, whether we can see it yet or not, the work that God has given us to do will be a part of that eternal Someday when heaven will come down to earth and Christ will wipe every tear from our eyes (Rev. 21). 

Our work, then, becomes meaningful.

But why, then, does it still seem so hard to get out of bed in the morning?   Why doesn’t this eternal-significance-thing give us a spring in our step causing us to head off to work with a spring in our step?

More often that not the problem lies with management—who’s in charge?   Not necessarily, who has the corner office, but who’s interests are really at stake in your career or mine?  Typically we’re actually serving ourselves while we pretend to work for someone else.  We agree to show up for work because we anticipate something that will further our purposes:  a paycheck, a chance for recognition or advancement.  In short, we work for our bosses because we think they can help us serve ourselves.  We naively think that our human bosses can provide us with perks that will last only a short time.

Silly, huh?   Like they say, if you work for yourself this way it only means that you have an idiot for a boss.

On the other hand, God has a way of using our job dissatisfaction to lead us to work for someone else.  To put our career aspirations under new management.  Someone who’s strategic plan can assure us that we’ll be part of something eternal.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a strange book.  It questions everything we consider to be self-evident and it proposes ideas that couldn’t seem more foreign to upwardly-mobile people like us.

The book of Ecclesiastes can be irritating.  It has a way of poking in the places where we already hurt.  The steady refrain of “Meaningless!” has a way of echoing around the hallways of our empty dreams and frustrating fantasies.   It can drive you crazy.

Or it can drive you to Him.  To reach out for the one who reaches back with nail-scarred hands, and who offers not only a way to escape death but also to find a life.  To find wholeness and joy and significance.   The chance to pour ourselves into something that will really mean something for a long, long time.

Works for me.

Given the chance, would you choose to become rich?

(Living Large: Looking for More in an Age of Less Part 2)

Our society requires greed.

If it weren’t for greed most ordinary citizens would never dream  of participating in our so-called reality shows.   Without greed no one would pay attention to the ads on TV which pay for those shows, because no one would really care about buying new and improved versions of products they’d already bought the year before.  Without greed most pro athletes would get real jobs when their knees started to give out, because without greed most sane individuals would never allow themselves to get clobbered by an defensive lineman just for money.  You have to really want money to do that kind of stuff.  And without the desire to get rich quick there’d be almost nothing on TV between midnight and 4 a.m.

When it comes right down to it, capitalism is really nothing more than structured greed.  Capitalism is based on the fact that if you can make a little bit better widget than your company made last year people will shell out their hard-earned money to get a new one and show it off to their neighbors.  That, of course, will be good for the widget companies, who will post a nice profit from all those widgets.  That will prompt them to create even more, new-and-improved widgets and to advertise them aggressively to entice people to buy their new ones.  These new widgets 2.0 will only feed the cycle more. 

Consumers will realize, of course, that they will need a lot of money to keep buying each year’s widget upgrades, so they will work hard at their jobs in order to bring home as much money as they can in order to buy more widgets, which will keep the widget companies busy creating even more widgets with even more exciting features. 

If we all decided that we were tired of buying new widgets, it could all grind to a stop.  That, in fact, is what starts to happen in a recession.  That scares the tar out of corporate executives.

Our society runs on greed.  The pursuit of wealth is what keeps it all going.  That fact is, if you or I click on the word “wealth” or maybe “treasure” pictures start to pop up on our screen showing what our idea of treasure might look like.   Maybe it’s a big house, a cool car or a TV screen the size of Connecticut.

The most important thing to realize, though, is that the benefits of wealth are considered self-evident.  It’s not like most people have paused to reflect and eventually concluded that a feverish attempt to accumulate possessions might be the right lifestyle for them.  Instead we just assume that that’s what we need to do.  Once the benefits of wealth seem self-evident our critical thinking grinds to a halt.

That’s why the book of Ecclesiastes stops us in our tracks.   The Old Testament pushes back on some of our assumptions.   What if money didn’t necessarily make us happier?

“I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on men:  God gives a man wealth, possessions and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them…This is meaningless.” (Eccl. 6:1,2)

This brings us back to the same question we asked in Part 1.  Why exactly would we want to have a lot of money?    (I know, that’s a silly question because everyone knows that being rich is better than being poor, etc. etc. but I’m the one writing the blog so humor me.)   Is life a game where the one who dies with the most toys wins?   What really is the benefit of having more money than other people we know?   What is the itch that we hope can be scratched with our wealth?   These questions take on an increasing relevance during a time of financial struggles.   Do we want the possessions?   Is the object of the game to have a big of a net worth number as possible?  If not, what does really matter?

Let me ask you a question:  suppose if you could have everything you were aiming for but without actually owning those things?   Let’s say you had a wealthy relative or friend who might loan you his vacation home or private jet, or might take you shopping for that new outfit you’d seen or might make sure that your home entertainment system was state-of-the-art.  Would that do it?    Through his generosity you ended up with everything you might want, but none of it was really yours, and you had no long-term promises that your standard of living would continue. 

I suspect most of us would find this scenario less than satisfying.   While taking the Lear to the South of France would be lovely (don’t get me wrong!) in the long run there’d still be something missing if everything came as a favor.  Part of the appeal of wealth comes from things that can’t necessarily be bought with money, but might seem to come along with the influx of cash.  Self-reliance.  Freedom.  The security from having a substantial margin with which we can face whatever surprises might come our way. 

In short, part of the appeal of money is that we can buy stuff.  But the larger, deeper appeal of money comes from our impressions that with enough money in the bank we could know that we could be OK, no matter what life might bring our way.  Money brings security and freedom.   That seems obvious, doesn’t it?  That’s  what we’re really looking for from our net worth. 

Well, Ecclesiastes would push back on that.  As John Ortberg says, life is a board game and when the game is done all our playing pieces go back in the box.  It all goes back in the box.   In fact, I’m not so sure that having a lot of money guarantees much happiness during this life right now.   A quick glance at the tabloid covers at my local grocery story would suggest that there are a lot of people who have far more money than I do but seem to be having a lot less fun.  I’m not sure I’d trade places with Brad and Angelina, even when their marital struggles seem to be having a calm period.

The fact is we clutch to our money like drowning people clinging to bricks.  Any fool can see that those bricks are really going to help us much, but when we’re feeling frightened and needy we’ll reach for whatever anyone tells us to grab. 

Here the Sermon on the Mount breaks in a completely counter-intuitive direction.   “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in a steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in a steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

The point:  Christ is the only treasure that will really satisfy the needs that lurk behind our credit card bills and bank statements. 

(Ding!  Cliché alert goes off.   Of course Christ is our treasure...duh!) 

But wait a minute.  What might we need to rearrange to get to the point where if we clicked on the word “treasure” up would pop a picture of Jesus?   That might take a little doing.  It’s not hard to picture Jesus as the forgiver of our sins, or maybe the personal body-guard in times of risk.  But to think of Jesus as our treasure seems like a bit of a reach, doesn’t it?   Take your pick:  Jesus or a big screen TV?   Which would you relentlessly pursue, your savior or your Lexus?

This raises the question of what Jesus is really good for, anyway, doesn’t it?  Of course he’s the one who gets us RSVP’d for heaven but beyond that does he really make that big of a difference.

Here’s where the Sermon on the Mount starts to really get serious.  Not only does it question the myth that our “treasures on earth” will really do it for us in the long run, it also points towards the ultimate satisfaction that comes from looking to Christ for the things we might want from our wealth.

Think about it:  all the things that we might hope for from our wealth—like security, freedom, a sense of being special, knowing that we’ll be taken care of in the future—those are the things that Jesus promises to provide us beyond whatever we might be able to ask or imagine.  Jesus may or may not provide us with huge houses and fabulous luxury cars, but any fool can see those status symbols aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.  Money can buy you a car, put gas in the tank, and bring you back to the garage of your beautiful house, but it can’t get you real friends to visit, or joy as you travel and it certainly can’t give you peace in your heart as you finish the day in your beautiful home.  In fact, there’s a lot of evidence to show that wealth can actually pull you backwards in those categories. 

While Jesus never promises an upper-class lifestyle, he does promise to provide us all the things that we might think and upper-class lifestyle might bring us.  The stuff we really ache for is the stuff he died for:  peace, joy, love and a settled sense of security that can let us sleep like a baby at night.

“Store up for yourselves treasure…”

So what does it take to start investing in that kind of treasure?

First of all, we need to learn to grieve.  We need to grieve the illusions we so easily cling to, the silly ideas we have about how deeply satisfied we’d be if we could pay all our bills on time.   (see Part 1)

Secondly, we need to recognize the reality check that our recession can provide.  The money pressures we feel from a struggling economy can help us discover some basic truths.  The fact is if I think money could solve my problems then I have problems that money could never solve. 

Thirdly, we need to practice imagining real wealth.  I’m working on this one the most in my own life.  I’m developing my ability to imagine myself being fabulously wealthy with the people in my life and the experiences God’s led me to discover.  He’s given me an astonishing windfall with the eternal purpose that He’s woven right into the story of my life.  And He’s grounded all these luxuries on a promise that’s a solid as Romans 8:28, guaranteeing that He’ll be working for good in everything because of His love for me.

Well, there you have it; my get-rich-quick scheme.