The Desire That Leads To Destruction

But if we have food and clothing, with these things we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. I Timothy 6:8- 10

Did you catch that? Verse eight, did you see it? I don’t ever think a verse ever hurt me as much as that one did this morning.

“But if we have food and clothing, with these things we will be content.” It still stings.

You see my list was little longer. Okay, a lot longer, and I thought I was being all holy with how short I was keeping it. I mean, I don’t want anything too outrageous, a house with a big porch and bathtub, a new car to replace the gas guzzling truck I drive, a laptop that wasn’t a Toshiba, a piece of land with a creek and lots of hills and trees, a few new clothes, maybe a hot tub to soak away some of these knots in my shoulders, one of those fancy oil diffusers that can cure cancer and give me super powers, and a bunch of books. Alright, a whole bunch of books, so many books that even I knew I was boarding on intellectual gluttony, but I wanted them for the right reasons so it had to be okay, right?

But that’s not what my Bible says I need to be content. Just food and clothing, both of which I have and so much more besides.  No amount of self-righteous justification can negate what God has told us, and as much as my stubborn heart wants to cling to my supposed right to have more and wallow in the unjustness of being denied, I have been faced with the choice of obedience or rebellion with my attitude. Now any move I make from this point forward is deliberate faith in or denial of his word. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

It is easy to justify the desire to be rich. Do you know what I could accomplish with a million or so dollars? The good I could do with that amount of money? I do. I have played out the scenario a million times in my head, and I think of how please God would be with my generosity and vision.

But somewhere along the way, I fell into the trap of thinking that he needed me to be rich in order accomplish all this great and wonderful stuff. Slowly, my heart was turned away from his amazing ability to act despite circumstance or perceived resources and I began to think that success relied upon my financial status. My view of God became small, and my sense of self became far too great.

You see, the snare isn’t the money. It’s the desire that entraps us, for I know of no desire that is ever satisfied with what is before it, with what it has had. Desire always craves more – more money, more power, more significance, and everything else promised by our ideas of wealth. So we are tempted to lie, to cheat, to steal, to break promises, and even to betray those we love. Because in our twisted sense of reality it will be okay if we just have more, we can buy back the love we might lose, we can buy back the reputation we destroy, and we can buy back the relationships we have betrayed once we have more. But that is not how it works, not in truth, not in reality. For there will never be enough, we will always be found lacking in our own eyes, certain that our failure to have more is the same as the failure to be more.

Once we have crossed that line, we are rejecting the truth that God’s love for us is based in who we are and not what we have, then desperation is all that remains. Senseless and harmful choices will follow in close succession as we continue in a cycle that will consume all that we had and all that we are in the futile attempt to appease a desire that will never be satisfied. Destruction and ruin are all that will be left to us, not because God has forgotten or neglected us, but because this is the reality we chose when we wandered from the faith that once sustained us. The pangs we will endure, we inflict on ourselves, and there is none to blame but the one who chose to nurture the desire that God warned would bring our destruction.

But if we have food and clothing, with these things we will be content, secure in the knowledge that we are children of Father who declares us priceless and of unspeakable value. For that is riches that no power on earth can take away.

The Cross, Flat Earth, and Other Foolishness

Disclaimer: I am not a supporter nor do I promote this view. I am merely offering it to you as a thought experiment.

So how many of you have heard the news? Apparently, the government, NASA, even the airlines, have been lying to us about the shape of the planet we live on. According to some,the earth is really not spherical but flat. That’s right, flat.

If you are like me, you probably thought that this argument was over and done with – oh, few hundred or more years ago, but surprise! The debate rages on and the people who promote this idea have been compiling a rather interesting array of proof. So what does this have to do with any of the other topics that I usually write about? Well, I am glad you asked.

I want you to stop for a moment and think about what your reaction was to hearing such news.
Really, dig in and feel it because in all probability it was so quick you did not even register it on a cognitive level. If you did entertain a conscious thought, it was most likely something along the lines of, “What kind of idiot would believe something like that?” I know that was my first thought when I read the headlines, the first twenty times.

However, this morning I stopped and thought about my reaction. Why did I dismiss these people? And why did I do it on such a level that I would not even pause to examine their arguments? That’s not me. I tend to be the type of person who will at least weigh the evidence before I toss a new idea out to the curb. And even then, if I can’t find a solid reason for wholesale dismissal, I will let it sit for a while without passing judgement, waiting to see if I stumble across some new bit of evidence that will confirm or dismantle the idea.

The longer I thought about my reaction, the more it bothered me. Not only had I dismissed the idea as ludicrous, I had determined that the ones defending it were fools and all without a second thought. I realized that everything they were espousing ran so counter to what I have been educated to believe that I didn’t even think it deserved my attention. Their idea upsets my paradigm, the reality that I am content to inhabit, and have never felt a reason to question. Why bother with an idea that so obviously has no foundation in truth, fact, or verifiable scientific data?

And then I realized that I was dealing with two sets of conditions that have been ingrained within my psyche:

1. The earth is spherical.
2. Anyone who dares to question that is a fool.

As a Christian, this is the type of reaction that I am used to receiving, not dishing out. But let’s get real honest, shall we? The ideas and truths of our faith are just as strange as a flat earth to someone on the outside. Every major component of our faith obviously has no foundation in truth, fact, or verifiable scientific data, and anyone who dares to question that is a fool.

And yet, we go around squawking about those who dare to question the validity of the message we are sharing. We get all offended and upset because they just will not concede that we are right. More than a few of us get downright ugly to those who point out how crazy we sound, and we have gotten pretty adept at playing the martyr because our delicate little feelings got bruised when someone was bold enough to tell us that we are being foolish for believing such things.

But, boys and girls, we have got to cut it out. We need to recognize the import of what we are asking others to believe, to accept as truth. We need to think about what it must sound like to their ears and how offensive it must be to their minds as we try to tell them something runs completely counter to everything they have known. To require that anyone would simply accept what we have to say without questioning or challenging our words is an insult to their intelligence, and we need to be fully aware of that fact. We sound just as crazy to them as a flat earth sounds to us, and believe or not, this was an intentional design on the part of God. He wanted it this way, and we need to quit acting as if his design is flawed.

If we think that arguing and logic are the means to demonstrating God’s love to the world then we have missed the point and we are operating in arrogance. It is our pride that tells us the reasons for accepting Jesus as Lord are found in our intellect, because they aren’t. Are there things we can prove about our faith? Absolutely. Should we find delight in the ways the Bible has been demonstrated as trustworthy and accurate in matters of faith and even science? Yes! But what bearing does the Bible have on the lives of those who do not acknowledge as the ultimate authority over their lives? None!

This not a command to turn off your brain. God never required that, only abusive leaders claiming to be Christians demand such an act from their followers, but truths of the Bible only real after our hearts have been transformed and our minds renewed by entering into a relationship with our Creator. Would it be an act of faith otherwise? I don’t think so.

God protected is truth by implementing a brilliant strategy wherein only those who truly desired to know him can embrace the foolishness of our faith to see the truth. He created a system through which only devoted could withstand the challenges to our faith before those who offer more rational options to total dependence on him. And he did so that we might not get caught up in our own vanity over our wisdom and intelligence, because ultimately, it’s not about you or your comfort, your prestige, or even your reputation. And if those are the only things that keep you clinging to this faith, your faith is going to be dismantled, because wounded pride does not communicate or demonstrate love.

Today, I let myself be an outsider, not to my faith but to the ideas of bizarre little community of people who have decided that everything I know is wrong, and in doing I was able to get a glimpse of what it must be like for those who hear the message of our faith. The view was sobering, but good as I was reminded of the words Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Our faith was never meant to be easy to rationalize or defend, it was meant to be lived for only then does it is the wisdom of God’s plan revealed.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Corinthians 1:18-25