So I've been out of the blogging business for a couple of days, and am finally catching up. I'm sorry, Laura. I promise that quitting my job won't keep me from posting. Anywho, my point is that I read the last 3 posts after church today, and I thought Laura's was especially interesting in light of the mini-discussion we had today in class about material goods.
All of my life, I've held the view that it didn't matter how much we had as long as we "used it for Jesus," which seems to be the generally held opinion. But over the summer, and Marcella could probably tell you about this in more detail than I could, we were talking about material possessions in class at church and Jim Cooke said that he thinks it's ridiculous to say that it's all right to be a rich Christian and that having more than we could ever need is just fine as long as we have the right attitude. I think he's right. I don't think Jesus was metaphorically calling us to give up the world and follow him. I think he was telling us that we really do have to give things up. Just how far to go on this, I don't know, but I do know that listening to people defend spending $50k on a car was very frustrating to me. Obviously, I don't practice this very well, but I do think it's important to realize just how pervasive materialism is when we, as Christians, can sit in church defending our materialism.
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I agree with you, lady. I don't see how we can be like Christ and be held in control by possessions of any kind. It doesn't matter if we're rich or if we don't have any clothes to wear. When we let our possessions take our attention off our Goal, we're wrong. It's a sickening and life-threatening wrong. I guess it goes to that verse so many people have been quoting of late. Proverbs 30:8-9 ...give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread (people have been leaving the only daily bread part out, it seems to me). Other wise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.
I think the part about giving me only my daily bread in there is important. Rich Mullins came up today in class. I really admire the physical life he lived because of his focus. The reason he had that focus was not because, I think, God gave him more ability for focus (I suppose that's another topic for another time). The reason was because he was able to 'throw off everything that entangles and run the race with perseverance the race marked out.' The comment was made today that maybe we're not all called to that. I guess my question is, why not? Why, like you said, do we justify our materialism?
Obviously none of us practice this well. We're all American citizens going to school at a private institution. We don't, for the most part, have to worry about getting our daily bread. So what's being asked of us? Does it just come down to not being controlled by possessions and therefore we can have things and work for things as long as they don't stop us from reflecting Christ? Is that possible? Not really sure. I'd like to hear from other people and do some more thinking. This is certainly a topic I'd like to read some more discussion on from everyone out there.
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