The Problem of Rich and Poor

It is only April of 2015 and already the race for the 2016 Presidential election is gearing up. Elections have a tendency to bring out the worst in people (much like Internet comment sections) but this year promises to be worse than most as it is without an incumbent candidate. Everyone is fair game. During election season (which seem to be continual) a lot of judgements and accusations get thrown around. This is really just a product of our sinful nature but it becomes particularly evident during campaigns.

With the economic disparity currently seen in the United States some of the most vitriolic accusations seen are those against the rich and those against the poor.

It is very easy to blame the rich for the plight of the poor. It is easy to attribute the financial gain of others  to exploitation or some moral failing. After all, we’ve seen vivid examples of just this sort of thing in the news. Corporate CEO’s benefitting from golden parachutes while duping investors out of millions. Millionaire athletes shirking tax bills. Add to that the very basic human emotion of jealousy which causes us to desire the wealth and security these individuals possess. However, when we take a step back, the black and white struggle against the 1% becomes much hazier. How much money does it take for one to become “rich”? If we’re honest with ourselves, we always strive for just a little more; just a little more and our lives would be secure.  When we realize that when we look at the “rich” we are not looking at our neighbor’s yard but rather gradients of a sprawling field, it becomes much more difficult to cast stones.

It is also very easy to blame the poor for causing their own problems. This is a common accusation during campaign stops. Listen to any debate on welfare or social services and you can usually trace the flicker of self-righteousness. America, it is said, is built upon the notion of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps (sorry Andrew Carnegie) through hard work and perseverance and we’ve all seen and read examples that give us inspiring stories of men and women whose empires were built upon sweat and guile. How easy is it then to look at the poor and disenfranchised with judgment that they lack or choose (through irresponsible decision-making) to build a capable life for themselves? These accusations are less often spoken but undercurrents in speeches and conversations. However, just as the concept of the “wealthy” is a spectrum, so is the concept of “poor”. Beyond that, we must force ourselves to sympathize with the situations of others and see the larger forces and incidents that create poverty. When we do this, we are faced not with a sycophantic mass but individual people and families struggling to build their own lives.

We are often quick to fall into either of these two camps, but I want to challenge us to ask 3 questions of ourselves before we cast judgement:

1.       Are you making wise financial decisions with your money? While it is easy to crucify the rich for exorbitant purchases and indulgences, it is much harder to ask the question: “how am I spending my money?” Are you indulging on unnecessary items? Are they justified? It is easy to say that the poor make poor financial decisions, but it is much harder to ask: “am I frivolous with my money?”

2.       Are you being generous with the money you have? Wealth or poverty is no justification for selfishness. If we decry others for their financial impropriety then we must also look upon ourselves and assess our own charity. Jesus’ parable of the talents gives us a model for how we are to steward our gifts (monetary or otherwise) whether we are wealthy or poor.

3.       Is the amount of money you have an impediment to gratitude? The root of our judgmental attitudes toward the finances of others is ingratitude toward the One who provided them. When we covet the wealth of others we disrespect the Lord who gave to us more than we deserve. When we mismanage that which we have been given we fail to steward that which has been entrusted to us. Jesus gives two examples that highlight this principle. Jesus discouraged the rich young man who came to follow Him but was unable to relinquish that which his heart most desired --- his wealth, for the sake of the Kingdom. It was his love of money which attempted to co-reign with Christ in his life. This cannot be. Nothing (least of all money) can share kingship with Christ in our lives. In contrast, Jesus brought to the attention of his disciples an impoverished widow who gave a small coin to the temple coffers. She, Jesus attested, gave out of her poverty rather than excess. Her generosity was rooted in her faithfulness. Both of these examples show us that wealth (or lack of it) is never to rule over our lives. Both jealousy and judgement are destroyed by gratitude.

So as we embark on this political season, let us consider first our own hearts before lashing out (especially on Facebook and Twitter) from unhealthy motives.

Why We Do What We Do

This is a talk I gave on why our youth ministry exists and how we should evaluate why we do the things we do.

For three years these people had followed Jesus. Many of them gave up their jobs, their families, and their normal lives. They gave them up to follow a preacher around. Maybe it was curiosity. They saw Him perform miracles; they heard him say some pretty inflammatory things to the important religious and political figures of the day. They heard him say things about the Lord and the Kingdom of God that made it seem real, like it was really something that was happening, after four hundred years of silence, this guy made it seem like it was happening NOW. So at some point, these people got invested they bought into Jesus. They listened to Him and tried to imitate Him, to be like Him. He sent them out with His power to heal and preach about the Kingdom of God and they saw amazing things.

And then He’s murdered. He’s put on trial on trumped up charges and put on trial by a coward judge who orders Him murdered rather than upsetting the crowd. And they themselves scatter. Each of them to a greater or lesser degree abandons Jesus. They have three days of guilt and confusion. Was all this a waste of my life? What was the point if this guy was just going to be murdered? Was this really the Kingdom after all?

Then there’s a knock at the door, and its Peter and John and they’re saying that the body of Jesus is gone, that He’s risen from the dead just like He said He would. Later Jesus Himself shows up. He shows the holes in His hands where they drove the nails to crucify Him. He eats with them. He teaches them. They are excited. Jesus is back and now something is really going to happen because people don’t just rise from the dead every day.

And then Jesus says: I’m leaving. Now it’s your turn.

It’s your turn to tell others about me, about the way in which the Lord wants them to live.

And then He’s gone. Disappears.

And there’s this moment of confusion, of bewilderment. What do we do now? He says that now we’re in charge, that we have the power to do the things He did. But I don’t feel powerful. I don’t know what to say. And each of them had to make a choice: to believe what Jesus said or to give up and go home. There was no Jesus there inviting them to come in and stay. I mean He was God of course we’ll stay around God. But He’s gone now. 

What do we do go home? This was their opportunity to go back to a normal life, to stop looking like weirdos by fanatics.

And yet in one little verse in the story of the early church it says: These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer.

This is the start of a new year. How many of you made New Year’s resolutions? Most of the time people don’t keep their resolutions but I think that evaluating your life is very helpful. One of the things that I often find myself drawn to asking is: why am I doing what I’m doing? It’s so easy to fall into patterns and routines. Don’t get me wrong, patterns and routines can be good things but we need to look at them honestly and ask: why am I doing this?

It is easy to get into a routine. Routines can be great things. They help us establish patterns of behavior. They can help us become the people that we want to be.

However, we have a tendency to continue routines and patterns long after they have fulfilled their usefulness. My daughter is 2 years old. Early in life she used a pacifier to comfort her. Now however she doesn’t NEED that pacifier anymore, but she still wants it, she still demands it, she still cries for it, but it no longer serves its purpose.

It’s like Newton’s first law of motion (for you math geeks): an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside source.

We tend to keep doing the thing we’re doing even after its purpose has ended.

For many of us, Church can be a routine. Youth group can become a pattern. We play dodgeball. We eat snacks. And I think sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves: why are we here? That’s what I want to do tonight: to talk about why we exist, because sometimes I think we get confused about why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Let me cut right to the chase: this is the goal of life: to know Jesus and make Him the center of our lives.

This should be at the heart of everything that we do in our lives.

The friends that we have – the core of those friendships should be Jesus.

The college we’re going to attend – the heart of that should be knowing and serving Jesus.

The boyfriend or girlfriend we want so badly – the heart of that should be knowing and serving Jesus.

But the reality is that we’re doing a pretty poor job at it. We get consumed by lust and envy and greed. We’re jealous and hateful. Even on our best days we’re horribly distracted by things that don’t make any difference and don’t bring us closer to Jesus.

Now the good news is that our standing before God doesn’t depend on us doing the “right” things or saying the “right” prayers. Our standing before God depends on Jesus’ death, his sacrifice to make us right before God. And that stays the same whether we’re having our best day or we’re having our worst day.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be striving to know Jesus more.

And that is what church is for, that is what youth group is for, they are tools to deepen the relationship between you and God.

And that’s what we’re here for. Strip away every single thing we do at youth group and that’s the core: to be a place to learn how to grow closer to God. Sometimes we get distracted and think it’s about games or food or about seeing our friends. Those are all fine things, good things, but they’re not the thing. If they were to suddenly disappear one week would things change? If one week we came here and there were no more games, would it matter? If you found out that your closest friends were never coming back to youth group, would you keep coming? If your parents suddenly said that they were never driving you to church again, how would it affect you?

I ask because I think about those first Christians that I told you about at the beginning. That’s the exact situation they were in.

(I know you were probably wondering why I told that story)

The early Christians (well they weren’t even that yet, they were just people who had followed Jesus) that had NO obligation to continue to meet together. In fact they had every reason to go home to their cities and their families and their jobs. Jesus was gone. The people who killed Him were still around (it’s only been 40 days, no one had forgotten yet). It would make perfect sense to lay low, at least for a while. Go home, become a fisherman again.

But they didn’t. They stayed.

They met together. They ate together. They prayed together.

They made an evaluation about what was rational, what was expedient, and what was faithful. They chose faith.

I’ll admit that sometimes in youth group it’s easy to get distracted and lose sight of the purpose. As someone who helps lead I have that problem. That’s why we need to periodically step back and strip away all of the “stuff” and really ask ourselves why we’re here, why we keep coming.

Are we here for the “stuff”?

Are we here because it’s a habit?

Are we here because we want to know Jesus?

I want to challenge you guys to ask that question of yourselves tonight.

Let me just say that the reason why we, as a ministry exist, is not to play games. It’s not to have food. It’s not to go to retreats. The reason we’re here is the same reason that the early Christians got together in those homes in Jerusalem --- they wanted to know Jesus and serve Him. All of the other “stuff” is fine so long as it does not distract us from Jesus.

When we chose the name A29 as the name of this ministry we did it deliberately because we wanted to follow in the footsteps of those early believers. There are 28 chapters in the book of Acts, but the history of Jesus working in this world goes on to this day. We want to be the 29^th chapter, the continuing chapter.

Think of this ministry as a tool in getting you closer to know Jesus.

Do any of you play sports?

I played baseball for 8 years when I was a kid (I stopped about 8^th grade (stupid decision, long story)) and I can remember all the practices that I would go to. If you play a sport, your ultimate aim is to get better at that sport. So to get better you practice, and you drill, and you watch. For me, the ways I got better at baseball were:

-         Practice (running laps)

-         Watching baseball on TV

-         Fielding grounders with my dad

-         Playing in games

Those were all different things that I did, but the purpose was the same: to become a better baseball player.

Wednesday nights, Sunday School, retreats they are all tools to help you know Jesus more and serve Him with your life. But they’re not the only tools, and they shouldn’t be. Reading your bible at home, listening to sermons, worshiping, following the examples of believers in your family. These are all other tools to get to where we want to be: close to Jesus.

I guess I’m saying two things:

-         The ultimate aim of the Christian is to know Christ and serve Him

-         Our purpose as a ministry is to help you do those two things.

So let me say this to you: you are like those early Christians. Nobody is forcing you to be here. I mean maybe your parents are to some extent but they can’t make you participate. They can’t make you engage. Only you are in control of your motives for being here. Those early Christians could have given up and gone home and I’m sure some of them did. But many didn’t. Many of them believe in the kingdom that Jesus told them about; they believed that Jesus was going to empower them to go out and do amazing things. Many of them chose to have faith in Jesus rather than what seemed to make sense for their lives. What are you going to do? What is going to be your motive for being here?

Let me promise you this: we, as leaders, are here for you. We don’t have to be. Nobody is making us, but we choose you. We choose to believe that Jesus wants to know you and that He has extraordinary plans for you. We believe that and we stake our time and our lives on that and we will continue to do everything in our limited power to help you grow closer to Christ. We are going to fail and we are going to get distracted with “stuff” but know that our goal is that you would know and serve Christ.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here’s the funny thing, those early Christians who got together, they had every reason to doubt, they had every reason to want to pack it up and go home. But they stayed together united in purpose after Jesus left because they believed it when He said that He would do extraordinary things with their lives, that He would give them power.

So they met in homes. They ate together. They prayed. They helped one another in whatever needs they had.

And one day, the Lord showed up.

He gave them the Holy Spirit and sent those ordinary people on a trajectory that would change the face of human history. Those weak and doubting men and women who had abandoned Jesus during His crucifixion, those were the people that Jesus chose to shape history, because they chose to remain when they didn’t have to.

You don’t have to be here.

But the Lord has amazing plans for you.

Goals for 2015

Every year for the past six years I have made it my annual tradition to prepare a list of goals and principles to live by in the upcoming year. It’s a little more thoughtful and deliberate than a new year’s resolution (or at least I like to think so.) It started innocently enough, one year in which I was feeling particularly ambitious. My goals run the gamut in terms of scope. One year my goals might be to finish a novel or run a half-marathon and another year they might be to buy a new pair of glasses. As I said, pretty wide spectrum. Every December (or January if I procrastinate) I set aside time to think through what I want to accomplish in the upcoming year. If I’m completely honest I’m not much of a long-term planner. I often have a hard time seeing the “big picture”. I’m also decidedly risk-averse (read: cowardly).

I had already given some thought and jotted down a few notes on what I want 2015’s goals to be when I went for a run a week ago. [Sidenote: running is one of the “principles” that I have been able maintain consistently. Yay me!] I was trying to find a way to articulate why I do this exercise year after year if I were asked. I circled around the answer: it is a way to get me closer toward where I want to be. But then I began to ask myself: where do I want to be? What is my life aiming for? I mean its one thing to say that I want to write 500 a day on the way to finishing a novel, but is that what I really want? It is indeed a very noble goal but is that truly where I really want to be going?

I pondered and pondered and pondered some more and this is what I rested upon:

In 2015 I want to respond immediately when the Lord calls. At the end of the day; at the end of my life, that is what I want to identify me: did I respond to Jesus.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am very good at dismissing the Lord’s calling. I will be leaving church and feel that I should pray for someone, but I get into my truck and drive home. At work, I will know that I should ask a deeper, probing question, but I shrug it off. It’s not that I don’t know what the Lord is asking me to do, it is rather that I have become adept at ignoring it or rationalizing it away. For instance, the other day I was going to see a movie with my parents (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies if you must know) and as we drove though my parent’s neighborhood, I saw a woman sitting on her porch sobbing. Immediately I felt the desire to pull over and ask if she was okay. But… we were already cutting it close on the movie start time AND we were almost to my parent’s house already AND I wasn’t the one driving. So we drove on.

Who knows what the outcome would have been. She probably would have thought me crazy and shooed me off her property, but that wasn’t the point. The point wasn’t the validity or rationality or probability of the request, it was the one asking, namely the Lord. Will I respond when He asks me to?

I don’t know where you want to go in life. I don’t know what kind of person you want to be. I don’t know what goals you hope to accomplish in 2015, but I encourage you to thoughtfully articulate them. Give them attention. Think about the man or woman you want to be and set yourself down that path. The only way you can control who you’ll be in 10, 15, or 20 years is to become that person today, this day, this moment.

As for me, my aim is to 1) actively listen and 2) respond immediately when the Lord calls.