prosperity and responsibility

CAUTION: This blog is 100% my still-being-formed opinion. It bears no true authority, and yet I'm wondering if there is something to it.

In our household as of late, we've been contemplating the necessity of a move in the distant future. For some this may be a no-brainer, a family of four in a two-bedroom condo with no basement or storage other than a one-car garage is madness. Yet Joc and I have been struggling to know whether we should really entertain a move or whether we should dig in for the indefinite future.

* * *

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast where in passing, the speaker mentioned some of the horrible material and moral condidtions in the rest of the world that include things like sexual exploitation, hunger, awful-yet-preventable diseases. I began to meditate on the incredible disparity between what my family with our moderate means enjoys compared to the rest of the world.

"Perhaps God has blessed us because we're His people" that's an explanation I hear sometimes. It implies that God rewards those who are faithful to him with wealth. Maybe I'm ignorant but as I think back over the history of the world, there seems to be a grain of truth to this, that some followers of Jesus Christ were gifted with a level of prosperity superior to many other people (admittedly this wealth was acquired through questionable and immoral methods to be sure which calls into question the original assumption, have we really, EVER been faithful?)
Still though, in my mind, at least, there is this connection. But if such a connection is real, our rationale for its reality is totally corrupted.
I don't think God desires to make the "faithful" rich. I look around this country in which we live and I see how wealth has drawn us away from God and not brought us closer.
One thing I DO know is that throughout the Bible God blesses people with various blessings not as a reward for good behavior but because he has an expectaion, even a hope that we'll be faithful with it.

If God has blessed his western followers with wealth, he surely has done so in the hopes that we would be trustworthy with it. And I'm almost certain that we've failed him in this arena. Rather than letting his blessings flow through us, administering them with his wisdom, mercy, and justice, we've consumed them all ourselves and in our self-indulgence we've borrowed even more. We've become more self-centered and less G0d-centered and other-centered. We've turned God's blessing into an asphixiating curse because we've taken for ourselves what we were meant to manage and distribute for God's glory.

And here's where I probably sound like a total wack-job... perhaps globilization and the woes it brings to our prosperity is God removing his blessing from people who were unfaithful with it. I know it's foolishness to try to describe with certainty the movement of God in the world on matters which he has not himself spoken about clearly, so i say this with great uncertainty... but perhaps God is on the move in the world, in search of those who can be faithful with his blessing in the ways that we haven't?

It's a sobering thought, especially for my family who is thinking about taking more of what God has entrusted to us to spend on ourselves (the house issue). Frankly, I'm not sure where the balance is on this one, I'm not sure that God has a problem with us moving, but I know it calls for slow, prayerful action...

People all over the world live in squallor, my family is more than comfortable. Children every bit as intrincially-valuable as mine are made to suffer with abuse and devestating want.

In the end will God praise me for being faithful with what he entrusted to me? That's a question I hope we'll all have the guts to ask.

God's purpose for discontentment

All this talk about lack of contentment has been making me think about Divine uses of discontentment. I had a conversation with someone recently that fueled this.

While i stand by the fact that i'm an ingrate when it comes to my inability to be content with the material and spiritual blessings God has given me. I DO think that there is a Divine restlessness that God can put in us on purpose to move us to some sort of action. (we bumped into this in the comments section of the previous post)

->sometimes my intangible yearnings are there to make me seek God more deeply.
->sometimes i may get frustrated with my church because God means for me to be a change agent.
->sometimes my marriage may seem really bad to me because it ISN'T all that God means it to be and he's trying to move me to make it more of what he wants.
->sometimes my heartbreak over the world's problems may be a call for me to find some small way of getting involved.

...you get the picture.

I'm curious, has anyone seen an example in their own life where a lack of contentment REALLY WAS from God, and it nudged you along to something that made you more healthy, more faithful, more trusting in God? If so please post a comment and share about it. Feel free to use the following as a guide.
1. what was the situation?
2. how did you work thru it to discover if it was just you being an ingrate or if it was something worked in you by the Spirit?
3. what action were you compelled to take?
4. what has been the result so far?

be brave... post away!

boredom

i mentioned this in a post or comment the other day, not sure which. But since then i've been thinking a lot about it....i'm referring to

the destructive power of BOREDOM.

My guess is that it might be different for different people, but i find that for me, being bored is quite dangerous. It seems to be a breeding ground for other negative things. here are a few.

1. lust/greed/gluttony (to name a few). I find that when i'm surfing the web with no point b/c I'm bored, i'm much more likely to feel tempted toward 'not so good things' on the computer. It's like there's something in my brain that is longing to be jolted into activity, no matter if it's good or bad. It's also at these times when i find myself tempted toward more "benign" but still destructive things like looking at houses on realtor.com and flipping thru the latest pottery barn catalog looking at the new sofa we NEED. And gluttony? simple. When i'm bored i find myself eating, not because i'm hungry but just because i'm bored.

I guess boredom for some reason causes me to give my appetites too much credence and it's not usually good.

2. discontentment. likely because of what happens above, i soon find myself tortured by discontentment. I guess it's the way my appetites get back at me when i shut them down. I wrote about that the other day. I'll spare you the details again here.

3. spiritual apathy. This one doesn't make sense to me, b/c when i'm bored it SHOULD mean that i'm more open to engaging in spiritual disciplines (study, prayer, mediation, fasting, you get the picture...) but i'm not. There's this line of boredom, where if i cross it, none of these things sound remotely interesting to me. Ironically these are the things that have some of the greatest promise for pulling me out of boredom, but when i'm in that state i want nothing to do with them.

4. mean-guy-ness. :) I get mean when i'm bored. I pick at my wife. I get sarcastic and grumpy. it seems that i think fighting with people passes for entertainment and some days i guess i prefer that to boredom. it's twisted, i know.

i could go on. i guess the remedy is to remember my calling that i'm saved by grace and created to do good works eph 2:8-10. to avoid apathy and stay active serving God and fulfilling His mission. But i must admit that even that sounds overly simplistic. And meanwhile i wonder if poor laborers in India get bored... or is it a curse that goes with great wealth?

this post is coming to no strong conclusion or "ta-da!" moments... sorry, i guess i'm losing interest :)

thoughts from a malcontent

i hate complaining and i find discontentment to be one of the ugliest AND most painful things in the world. But here i am on the 8th day of the New Year, battling against myself on this very front.

I go around like this far too often, somedays i feel so at peace in my skin, car, house, job, life. I can't imagine how i could ever want or need more. I can't believe that so many people are so unhappy.

Then a switch flips in my brain and suddenly everything is awful. And there's this acidic yearning inside of me for more, better.

Maybe it's the New Year's syndrome that so many people feel. Maybe it's boredom (i've learned not to underestimate the destructive power of boredom). Perhaps it's winter, even though this hardly has turned out to be a typical winter. Or maybe it is really that I'm an ingrate who refuses to be thankful for things that 90% of the world only dreams about having. Funny thing is, in this current state I KNOW that even if i had everything that i feel i'm lacking, i'd still not be happy. I've got my thoughts on why this is too... i'll spare you on them now.

So i wait for the switch to flip back, and meanwhile i grit my teeth and recount all of my blessings hoping that God will move my eyes to nobler things and bless my heart with gratitude... and SOON.

Comments are welcome